


Monsters

by manboobs



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Creatures and Monsters, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sheriff Stilinski's Name is John, Slow Burn, Stilinski Family Feels, Too much coffee, the slowest of slow burns really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-29
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2018-08-30 15:22:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 25
Words: 61,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8538196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manboobs/pseuds/manboobs
Summary: Stiles has inappropriate emotional reactions to his dad being in trouble, he and Derek drink a lot (A LOT) of coffee, Lydia's there, so is Parrish (ugh), everything is a mess.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> 08/08/18 update: this fic is now **complete**. no longer a WIP. aw yeah.
> 
> Honestly, I've been calling this fic "Monsters" in my head since its inception. It doesn't fit with the story at all but I can't find a better title for it so.
> 
> This is un-beta'ed as hell btw.
> 
> Thank you for reading, hope you don't hate it. :)

He’s running, tripping over half-rotten logs. The sound of his feet hitting the ground is cushioned by dead leaves. The darkness around him seems solid, impenetrable. He’s out of breath, throat on fire, legs dragging. But he’s can’t stop now. A look over his shoulder. The eyes are still there. Red, glowing. Closing in on him. Too close. Too close. He keeps running, praying he won’t run straight into a tree. He can’t see anything around him, he can barely even feel the ground. It’s as if the darkness is a palpable, moving thing, running alongside him. He can’t breathe. A deep, feral growl makes the hair at the nape of his neck stand up. Too close, too- faster- he-

He opens his eyes, blinks at the floral print of the sheets above him, feels them warm and soft on his skin. He breathes, one lungful, a second. He’s okay. He’s home, he’s okay.

He sits up in bed, careful not to jostle the sleeping body next to him. He takes stock of where he is: the shadows of trees through the window stretching on the ceiling, his alarm clock blinking red and steady on the bedside table, the soft barely-snores of the person on the other pillow. His heart rate settles a bit as he scratches at his cheek, stifles a yawn. 

It’s been a while since he had this particular nightmare. He doesn’t remember it ever being this… intense. The darkness felt like a living thing, pressing on his lungs and filling his brain. He shakes his head against the fading memory, glances at the clock again. 3 am.

He’s considering his chances of falling back asleep when he notices his phone buzzing next to his pillow. He picks it up. An unknown number flashes across the screen. Frowning, he slides the little green telephone to the left.

“‘Lo?”

“Stiles. This is Lydia.” Clipped syllables and tense voice. Stiles’ heart ratchets back up. He pulls his eyes all the way open, scrubs a hand down his face. This won’t be good.

“Lyd, hey. Hi. What’s up? Whose number is this?” Is he rambling already? It feels like he might be. He’s not good under pressure. He used to be. But he hasn’t had to be in years. He lost the habit.

“Jordan’s. Listen, it’s not important, I- There’s been a- Listen.”

Stiles is listening. “Lydia. What.”

“Don’t panic, okay?” Stiles is panicking. “I’m- I’m taking care of it. I just- I have to get back to Boston at the end of the week, because Mark - you know Mark - he’ll mess up the samples and I-”

Stiles gets out of bed, pads to the bathroom and closes the door, because he feels like he’s about to shout at his best friend and he doesn’t want to wake up the blissfully sleeping person in his bed. He’s considerate, and probably already half out of his mind with anger and worry. “Lydia! What!”

“You have to come to Beacon Hills. It’s your dad.”

Okay. Okay okay okay. Fetal position on the floor of the bathroom assumed. Is he still breathing? It seems like he is. Okay. He grits his teeth, asks through them: “What. happened.”

“Listen, he’s okay. He’s just… at the hospital.” Lydia is cringing through the words, probably pacing and wringing her hands. Stiles wonders if she’s started picking at her nails. When Lydia’s manicure is in shreds, that’s when real shit has hit the fan. He starts wheezing, just a little bit. 

“He was in a car accident, with the cruiser. Something with a stop sign, I’m not sure. He’s got  a concussion and his wrist is probably- they’re doing an X-ray right now. He’s okay, I think. The doctors wouldn’t- even though you  _ know _ I’m on his list of emergency contacts, what  _ even _ -”

“Lyd, okay okay”, he tries to stop her before she builds up any real steam and a couple doctors end up missing a testicle for crossing Lydia Martin. “Where are you?”

She deflates a bit at. “In the waiting room.” Softer, just for Stiles: “I hate this place.” Yeah. He knows the feeling. She clears her throat. “He’ll probably need someone to stay with him for a few days, and I would, you know I would, but-”

“But Mark. I know, Lydia.” She sighs, grainy through the phone. He sighs too, for good measure. “You know, you should really hire assistants that are not totally incompetent.”

A huff of a nervous laugh. “So you’ll come?”

Stiles checks his legs, finds them not too chicken-y. He stands up. “Yeah. Of course I’ll come. I’ll book a flight right away, I’ll- shit, I gotta get off work.”

Lydia hangs up on him after she gets triple confirmation that yes, he’ll come, he’s on his way, Jeez, Lyd. He buys a plane ticket right then and there. He texts Mike, his partner, letting him know he’ll be mostly off for the week. He takes a second to thank all the Gods that he’s self-employed and in charge of his own schedule. Mike won’t be pleased but he’ll understand.

He lets his phone slide off his fingers and clatter to the floor next to him. He’s sitting on the rug, his back to the bathtub, head resting on the porcelain lid. He needs to pack a bag, leave a note for Andy, call a cab. He always forgets his charger, and toothpaste. He needs toothpaste. 

His phone lights up. He squints against the glare, realizes he’s been sitting in the dark this whole time. Same unknown number, a text from Lydia.  _ Glad you’re coming home. _ Home. Beacon Hills. He hasn’t been back there in almost eight years. Maybe they have a Wendy’s now. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rewriting turns out to be much more difficult than I envisioned. sorry darlings.
> 
> oh, I want to take a second to thank my flatmates, who have been my enduring cheerleaders in this endeavor and many other.

Stiles calls Scott as he waits his turn in the check-in line. He needs someone to pick him up at the airport. He’s not rich enough to shell out a one-hour cab ride fare. The call goes to voicemail. He tries again. Scott babbles apologetically at him about not being able to miss a shift at the clinic because of some holiday or other that he’s taken or will be taking or whatever the hell. Stiles tunes it out. He doesn’t say “I need my best friend”. He doesn’t say “why can’t you ever be counted on in emergencies”. He says “okay fine I understand” and resolves to be a hundred bucks poorer when he gets to Beacon Hills.

The plane ride is just as cramped and smelly and awful as it’s bound to be. Stiles spends it trying to sleep. He ends up stifling down irritation toward Scott and worry about his dad. He closes his eyes, lolls his head back on the headrest. He knows he worries too much. People get into car accidents, much worse ones, it happens. And his dad is fine, Lydia said so. She wouldn’t lie to him. But… Beacon Hills.

Nothing is ever simple there, or quite what it looks like. There’s always something darker lurking around a corner, just waiting to get you. Scott keeps telling him the town’s quieted down since he moved back about four years ago, and his dad rolls his eyes every time Stiles expresses his reluctance to go back, but. The feeling of dread pooling in his gut tells him he’s not necessarily wrong.

He sighs, settles his shoulders. He can do this. He can take care of his dad for a week or so, make him eat tofu and vegetables and beat him at Boggle and look over his shoulder for the big bad monster of the week and maybe even persuade his dad to retire and move to Boston. He’s been through so much worse. He can do this.

When it’s all over and he gets back to Boston, he’ll finish sanding the kitchen cupboards, like Andy’s been nagging him to. He’ll unpack their collection of mismatched mugs, set it up all nice for when he comes back from his tour. He’ll start working on the guest bedroom so it’s ready for his dad for Christmas. He’ll be fine. They’ll be fine.

::

He walks through baggage claim, cranky and tired. Too little sleep, not enough caffeine. His back’s all stiff and weird from sitting uncomfortably for hours. He glares as people pass by him pushing carts stacked high with suitcases and bags. How can there be so many people here at 9am on a Tuesday?

He walks toward the taxi counter as soon as he’s cleared the doors, but a flash of dark catches his attention. He turns around and _there_. Hiding behind a couple of tired-looking women sipping at giant Starbucks paper cups, a somber air about him, is Derek Hale.

Stiles stops in his tracks, squints. He waits for the hallucination to subdue. It doesn’t. Instead, its shoulder rise slowly up to his ears and it looks… bashful? Embarrassed? Awkward?

Goddam. What is Derek Hale doing here? Has the world ended already? Is this how he dies? Nine years without seeing or hearing about the guy once, and now he’s pretending not to stare at Stiles in an airport? Goddam. He needs coffee. It’s too early. He needs a cab.

Stiles stands there, the weight of his bag sawing through his shoulder. He feels like ignoring the man hiding behind people like he’s five, and going for a cab. He feels like this might be a great opportunity to take his nervousness and fear out on someone he knows from experience can take it. He feels like running away. He stands there and hefts his bag higher onto his shoulder.

After an embarrassingly long time, the shadow behind the women finally moves. It twitches and shrugs and moves from one foot to another like it’s getting ready to do something it’s dreading. Stiles can relate. Finally, it steps out of its hiding place and there he is. Not a hallucination. Derek Hale, the werewolf, the legend. Famous for his eyebrows of doom and his tragic, constantly repeating past. Looking pissed off and uncomfortable and decidedly normal. No blood. Stiles guesses that’s as good as it gets with Derek.

Derek walks up to him slowly, keeping his gaze two inches to the left of Stiles face. He comes to a stop three feet or so away from Stiles. They look at each other.

“Stiles”, Derek greets him, lackluster. Jesus.

“Derek”, Stiles greets back. He tries to convey as many “why are you here?” with his tone as humanly possible.

Derek’s shoulders hunch in response. He’s got patches of grey in his beard, like Chris Argent back in the day. Weird.

“Still not big on words apparently. Got it”, Stiles nods to himself. He throws a longing look at the line of cabs waiting outside the sliding doors. “Scott sent you?”

Derek still won’t look him the eye for some reason. He shrugs again, mumbles something that sounds like Lydia’s name, and. Well. That would work, too.

The bag on Stiles’ shoulder gets heavier with every passing second of the weird standstill they’ve got going on. Stiles needs it to stop. Now. “Ok, so. You’re the welcome party? It didn’t expect much, sure, but a few balloons would have been nice. A glittery sign? Freshly baked goods? Where’s the sense of small-town hospitality?” He gestures at Derek with both hands. “Prodigal son returns to town after eight long years and all I get is this? I’m offended, a little bit.”

Derek rolls his eyes at Stiles. His whole body seems to relax into it. Antagonism and nagging, he can work with, apparently. Well, Stiles can give it to him, definitely. “So what’s your deal? Lydia threatened you into picking me up?” he asks as Derek steps toward him, takes his bag from him and turns around. Stiles automatically falls into step behind him. “Please tell me we’re not driving back in your godawful soccer mom car. I will not be seen in a Toyota as I make my grand return. I have standards.”

Derek huffs, speeds up the pace a little bit. So does Stiles.

“So you’ve been AWOL for a while. How come you’re back? Missed the old days of brooding in dark corners, terrorizing teenagers? Isn’t it getting a little old?”

Derek comes to a stop in the parking lot. He fishes keys out of his pocket and unlocks a Sheriff station cruiser. Stiles shuts his mouth with a click of teeth. Judging by the look on Derek’s face as he tosses Stiles’ bag into the backseat and slides into the driver’s seat, he was counting on that. Stiles gets into the passenger seat quickly, a million question swarming his brain.

“Do they know you took one of the cars, at the station? Is this your idea of a joke? Oh, Stiles dad just had a car accident.” Stiles does his best approximation of Derek’s voice, a toneless, gritty, much too deep thing. “Let’s go pick him up in a stolen law enforcement vehicle.”

Derek sighs through his nose, forceful and annoyed, as he turns the key into the ignition. He pointedly avoids looking at Stiles as he pulls out of the parking lot and into the road. He says nothing. Great. One hour stuck in a stolen car with a mute almost-felon. Stiles’ life is improving by the second.

He squares his shoulders. “Okay, there’s two ways I see this going, alright?” He holds up his index finger. “One, you say nothing and I talk non-stop for the whole ride. You know I can do it dude. I haven’t changed much. Two”, he holds up his major, points it at Derek’s face, “you actually answer my questions and you don’t have to listen to me lecturing you on the most disgusting flavor of frozen yogurt - caramel, by the way - and we have an actual conversation like to matu- like two adults. Who _talk_.” He points his chin at Derek. “What’s it gonna be? I vote for option two.” He laces his hands in front of him, makes a big show of waiting for Derek’s answer.

Derek taps at the wheel of the car. He looks straight ahead, stays silent. Stiles settles more firmly into his seat, feels the familiar creaking leather mold his back perfectly. He opens his mouth to start ranting on pistachio as a froyo flavor, but Derek beats him to it.

“I didn’t steal the car. I’m a Sheriff’s deputy.”

Stiles eyeballs him. “In Beacon Hills?”

Derek steals a glance at him, seemingly caught off guard by Stiles’ surprise. “Yeah.”

“Since when?”

Derek taps the wheel again, looks at Stiles quickly before settling back on the road. “It’s been about a year and a half, give or take a few months?”

“A year and a half?!” Stiles all but shrieks.

The last time Stiles saw Derek, he was running off into the sunset with Braeden. That was… almost a decade ago. It feels like a few lifetimes. Mexico, the berserkers, that bitch Argent and her were-smurf mutation… Derek almost dying. Man, that life sucked. Stiles is so glad he got out of it.

There had been no goodbyes or texts or whimsical postcards. Stiles and Scott assumed Derek was headed to South America to find Cora, never really thought much of it. Braeden came back Senior year to help them with yet another hellfest. Derek wasn’t with her. Stiles figured, good on him. Nothing was waiting for Derek in this festering pit of despair.

When he really thinks about it, Stiles can kind of remember Scott mentioning Derek had moved back to Beacon Hills a few years ago. It was lost somewhere in the very detailed account of the ski vacation and subsequent breakup Scott had with that girl Meaghan, who was a were-something or other. Stiles is fuzzy on the details.

Nothing about him joining the station though. He’d have remembered. Nothing from his dad on the subject either. Stiles would have pitched a fit if he’d been told, of that he’s sure. Was his dad keeping this from him? What for? They’ve been so good at keep each other in the loop since Stiles moved away.

Stiles shakes the thoughts away. He sneaks a peek at Derek as he watches the road. He hasn’t changed much in nine years. Less than Stiles, mere human, has. Salt-and-pepper beard, stubble almost-not-quite unkempt, crows feet at the corner of his eyes… he looks less hard around the edges. He’s wearing a dark grey jacket, almost acceptably large jeans, scuffed boots. Mid-thirties Derek Hale looks fine. He looks good. Not that Stiles notices, or has ever noticed that kind of thing. About Derek Hale. Ever.

Derek clears his throat. Stiles jumps. He’s been staring a little bit.

Hesitantly, Derek asks: “You didn’t know?” Not trusting his words, Stiles shakes his head. Derek frowns. “I thought your dad would have mentioned it?”

Stiles looks out the window, annoyed that Derek would so easily put his finger on what’s itching at Stiles’ nerves. “Evidently, he didn’t.” Silence weighs down on Stiles’ lungs.

“He talks about you all the time”, Derek adds, quiet.

Stiles turns toward him, sees the edge of a smile etched onto his cheek. “Oh yeah? I bet he regales the station with tales of my delightfully awkward childhood.”

Derek huffs a tame laugh. His index finger taps the wheel. “He’s a good Sheriff.”

Sheriff John Stilinski has been holding office for more than fifteen years now. Constantly reelected by his county, he comes with strong backing from higher ups at the FBI thanks to Scott’s dad. Since Beacon Hills has known less mass murders in recent history, he’d been able to rebuild a stable, trustworthy force. A second family. Stiles can sleep at night, knowing his dad is looked after by people who care deeply for him, who would - and have - jumped in front of a bullet for him. He doesn’t worry so much anymore. He does feel guilty, at times, that he’s so far away. But they talk about it, and they work through the issues caused by distance.

They usually talk on the phone or Skype at least once a week. They never spend a major holiday apart. Stiles tells him almost everything, has since that Christmas in freshman year of college when he arrived home with Lydia in tow and they spent a week on the couch drinking hot cocoa, watching TV and napping.

But apparently Stiles’ dad has been leaving stuff out of their weekly conversations. Pretty big stuff. His dad knows Derek’s played a central part of Scott the Lycanthrope: the Early Years. Why wouldn’t he tell Stiles about his return? What else doesn’t he tell Stiles? Stiles thought they were close, so much closer now than after his mom died, closer than when this whole supernatural mess started up. But maybe they aren’t?

He keeps his eyes fixed on the blurry mass of trees speeding through the window as he nods slowly. “Yes, he is. He’s a great Sheriff.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter will be up... some day. who knows.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mannn this was HARD. okay so I'm still taking extreme liberties with how college actually works in the US.
> 
> still unbeta'ed.

Stiles gets lost in his thoughts for a while. Too preoccupied to follow up on his threat to drown Derek in obnoxious chatter, he startles when Derek initiates conversation.

“You live in Boston now, right? You like it?” he asks as they reach the highway.

Stiles’ eye widen of their own accord, surprised into silence. Derek throws him another nervous, self-conscious look. “What?’

“Sorry”, Stiles scratches at his cheek. “I hadn’t been expecting…. you know, small talk.”

Derek rolls his eyes. “I can do stony silence, if you’d prefer.”

“No, uhm. This is fine. Cool.” Stiles sighs, trying to dispel the building tension in his chest. “Yeah, I’m in Boston. It’s alright.”

Derek chuckles, eyes on the road. “High praise.”

Stiles offers a small smile in return. He has questions, a million of them, buzzing around his brain. But Derek isn’t the one who should answer them. He thinks they’ll naturally lapse into silence again, but Derek keeps asking harmless, inane questions about Boston and his job and college. They manage half decent small talk, soothing chatter that declutters Stiles brain, occasionally interrupted by the murmur of the station radio. Derek ignores it, fingers tap tap tapping on the wheel.

When they enter Beacon Hills, Stiles expects a wave of nostalgia to hit him, but everything is just painfully familiar.

::

Derek drops him off at the hospital but he makes no move to get out of the car. Stiles hesitates, half out of his seat, one leg on the pavement.

“You’re not coming in?”

Derek looks back at him. He seems impatient, almost jittery. “No, I- I gotta go back to the station for a bit. I’ll come by later.”

Stiles grabs his bag from the backseat. He ducks to get a last look at Derek. “Okay dude. Thanks for the ride. It has been…. Yeah.”

Derek gives him a stilted nod. “No problem. He’s in room 638.”

Then he’s off like a shot across the parking lot. Stiles isn’t sure this kind of driving is appropriate for an officer of the law, but who is he to judge?

When the cruiser has disappeared from view, he takes a second to take it all in: the bite of cold in the air, the way everything always smells kind of damp, pine trees in the background of every direction you look. Beacon Hills. Something squeezes at Stiles lungs. He has to remind himself to breathe.

Through the sliding doors, it’s the same world of pain, misery and antiseptic it’s always been, even though the nurses don’t look familiar and the place underwent major transformations a few years after Scott and Stiles got the hell outta dodge.

Stiles makes his way through the crowded lobby, doing his best to repress flashing memories of the Nogitsune and his mom in a white gown and scary MRI machines. He grinds his teeth, breathes through his nose, follows the green line to the elevators. Room 638, Derek said.

::

He knocks softly on the door before he pushes it open. In the center of the room is his dad, hospital-gowned and hooked up to an IV, sleeping. He looks sunken, tired even in what looks like a deep slumber. The left side of his face is purpling impressively, left hand in a blue plastic cast. Stiles heart ratchets up at the sight.

Lydia’s resting in the bright orange armchair at his dad’s bedside. She’s got her legs tucked under her, her hair in a messy bun on the top of her head, her right arm extended toward the bed as if to hold his dad’s hand. She looks fast asleep, but when Stiles crosses the room toward her, her eyes snap open and she smiles at him, tired and relieved. They hug silently, Lydia’s face buried in his chest.  Lydia’s hugs feel like home, like Scott’s and his dad’s.

“What happened?” Stiles asks, keeping his voice barely above a whisper.

She lets go of him, settles back on the armchair while Stiles sits at the foot of the hospital bed, careful not to jostle his dad.

“I was with Jordan when he got the call. It was maybe two, three am? We came here right away, he…” She steels herself. “Your dad rear ended another car at a stop sign with the cruiser.” She starts counting on her fingers. “His wrist is sprained, he’s got grazes and bruising on his face and torso and an impressive hematoma on his right knee. They feared a concussion, but the doctors ran tests and cleared him about an hour ago. He’s okay, Stiles, he’s okay.”

Stiles scrubs a hand down his face. This is all too familiar. He takes a second to hate that the only parent he has left is always in some measure of danger. He’s proud of his dad, of what he does, he is. But he wouldn’t mind if he decided to finish his career behind a desk, bored and safe.

“Okay.” He reaches his hand out to Lydia, who grabs it, squeezes. “Thanks Lyd. Thank you.” They share a tight smile, one made of many shared hardships.

“What about the other car though? Are they okay?” Stiles asks.

Lydia shakes her head dismissively. “Yeah, the woman in the other car was fine, she wasn’t even taken to the hospital. Her car, on the other hand…”

Shit. “Shit. Do you have her contact information? I’ll call her, offer to pay for the repairs, it’s the least I could-”

Lydia waves him off, avoiding his gaze. “It’s already taken care of, don’t worry.”

Well. Of course it is. Of course Lydia would do this. She fixes issues as soon as they appear, either with brains, or with money. Often simply with enduring will. And she always got Stiles’ and his dad’s back. They’re family.

“Lyd, you shouldn’t have”, he says, purely for form’s sake. They both know that whatever Stiles has to say about it, she would have done what she thought was right. Stiles has to ask, though. “Who is she?”

Lydia frowns, like she’s trying to remember something far off. She shakes her head again. “I don’t know, I didn’t get a name. I dealt directly with her insurance.”

Questions keep swarming Stiles’ mind. “Okay”, he nods slowly. “But how did this happen?” He gestures to the sleeping form next to him. “My dad is the safest driver, you know that. He’s the _Sheriff_ , for fu- heavens’ sake. Was he- ?” He lets the sentence hang, no clue how to go on. “Do you think I could get a look at the police report on the crash? Parrish will let me check it out, right?”

Lydia fixes him with a look. He knows it well. It’s Lydia’s “listen to me and do as I say because I know better” look. “Stiles. Accidents happen. It’s fine.” She gets up, steps right in front of him and puts both hands on his shoulders. “Your dad is fine, so is the other… victim, he’s- He might have been tired, or distracted. It happened, and now it’s over. Don’t get in your own head about it, okay? He’s fine.”

Stiles takes a deep breath. Lydia squeezes his shoulders until he feels his bones creak. He lets out all the air from his lungs slowly. He looks at her. She looks back, determined. “Okay”, Stiles says. Lydia nods, slumps a little into him.

Stiles pats her back soothingly, feeling the tension seep out of her. They’re good at calming each other. It’s a balance thing. A best friend thing. After a while, Stiles leans away from Lydia to catch her eyes. “Do you want to get out of here for a while? Get some rest… I’ll stay, try to catch the doctors to get some more information.”

Lydia sighs, looking torn. Up close, she looks exhausted, purple marks clearly visible under her clear eyes.

“I promise I’ll call you if anything new comes up”, he adds softly.

She relents. After a quick hug, she squeezes his dad‘s hand one last time and dashes out the door with a kiss on Stiles’ cheek.

Stiles takes in the ringing silence of the hospital room. He moves to the armchair, taking his dad’s hand in his, and settles in for the day.

Thank God for Lydia. She keeps saving their asses, the Stilinski men. Thank God she’d been there to take care of everything. Stiles trusts her with more than his life. He’s so glad she’s family.

::

During Stiles and Lydia’s first year of college, Stiles started UMass intending to follow in his dad’s footsteps and study criminology. Getting out of Beacon Hills and its collection of things that go bump in the night had felt like a victory on its own, and Stiles was ready to celebrate by throwing himself into college life. That was the only way Stiles knew how to be: all in.

But life wasn’t done kicking him in the balls. A few weeks into his first semester, he started having panic attacks again. Lots of them. He’d zone out in class, fall asleep at his desk more often than not. He’d lie awake at night, listening to the soft snoring of his roommate, head empty and heart racing.

In every practice case, every crime, every felony, every murder he studied in class, all Stiles could see were claws slicing through flesh, arrows fired at dark figures, blackened veins pulling pain from a dying deputy, red glowing eyes or a macabre tree stump.

Stiles stopped being able to concentrate, failed test after test. Even his research mojo was affected. He couldn’t write papers without his skin buzzing off his limbs or his ears ringing. He would go for a run, let his mind wander, and end up lost in parts of the city he had never been before. About two months in, he was made to drop a class after not showing up for three straight weeks.

Stiles knew, logically, what was happening to him. Now that he felt safe, now that he was away from danger, the trauma he had spent years repressing was finally catching up to him. He was pretty sure a shrink would tell him exactly that, word for word. But he was finally, finally on the right path. He couldn’t let the monsters win. So he tried harder.

A part of him knew that he was just digging himself a bigger hole, but if the only way forward was down, he would just keep digging. The more time he spent trying to overcome his difficulties, the more obsessed he became. He didn’t sleep, barely ate, spent hours in the library staring at the same paragraph in a textbook. He fell behind. When he started getting hour-long panic attacks at the mere idea of going to class, he had to admit defeat.

He shut down.

Weeks were spent in his dorm room, sleeping all day and getting blackout drunk at night. He drank all the beer his roommate had smuggled in. _All_ the beer. Some whisky too. And vodka. He stopped breathing a few times. He would only gasp back to reality when his lungs were on fire and his head was screaming. Stiles was fine. He wasn't possessed, or bleeding, or impaled. He was _fine_. He just needed more beer.

That’s when Lydia came in, glorious goddess that she is. She’d been at the MIT campus five miles from Stiles the whole time, kicking ass in the mathematics department. Scott and the Sheriff called her in a panic after Stiles dropped off the face of the earth, and she decided to take matters into her own hands.

She picked Stiles off his bed, sobered him up, made him shower, shave, do laundry and change his sheets. She made him buy her lunch and dinner at fancy off-campus places where she made him eat full, healthy meals. She gave him the sternest, most caring pep talk he had ever been given. She threatened to burn all his plaid if he didn’t see a campus psychologist. She bullied a poor unsuspecting admin aide into helping Stiles change his major and keep his scholarship.

In two days and with a ruthless, continuous clacking of heels, Lydia Martin saved Stiles Stilinski’s life. And she wrote an A-worthy paper for her Thermodynamics class. Finally, she booked them both flights home for Christmas, and delivered Stiles to his dad on Christmas day, probably the most presentable and healthy he had been since he’d started college.

Stiles’ memories from this time in his life are hazy at best, traumatic at worst. He hadn’t really noticed then, hadn’t really paid attention to Lydia’s trembling hands, the particular set of her jaw, the downward slope of her shoulders. They talked about it at length later on, but that winter, Stiles was oblivious to Lydia’s demons. To his credit, it was easy to miss.

Lydia was staying on top of her classload and dazzling her professors daily with her brilliance. She was as poised and popular as ever. But she was hanging on by a thread. She didn’t know how to handle the new side effects to her banshee powers moving to a bigger city had brought on. Voices whispering dark, unknowable things in her head day and night. Gritting her teeth against the urge to scream every passing second. Lydia felt removed from everything. It was too easy to slip away from what was mundane and real and important, like other people, and herself. Her fellow students seemed shallow, faded. She got to know them without knowing anything about them. Everything that wasn’t numbers was slipping through her fingers without her wanting to hold on to it. For the first time in her life, Lydia truly felt alone, isolated in a fortress of intellect and sophistication that felt pointless.

Having to take care of Stiles, the boy who saved her from harm too many times to count, still the only boy (this side of the Atlantic) that had ever seen her cry, gave her a sense of purpose. She bossed him around and felt strong. She comforted him and felt warm. She put his life in order and it quieted the voices in her head. She found a sense of belonging while rescuing Stiles Stilinski. Someone was depending on her and she finally felt tethered to reality. She was anchored in their shared strength, in their shared vulnerability.

When they showed up on Sheriff Stilinski’s porch on Christmas morning and he welcomed them both with open arms and a slightly wet smile, Lydia was home. She stayed with the Stilinskis through the holidays, her parents off on some cruise or other. Around her second helping of pie on New Year’s Day, she decided to adopt them.

Early in the mornings she and the Sheriff – “call me John, Lydia” – would sit at the breakfast counter with mugs of coffee and talk about nothing and everything. They usually had a good hour before the Sheriff – “John, Lydia, for heaven’s sake” – had to go to work, and Stiles stumbled downstairs, preverbal and sleep-soft. She would pretend not to be excited about her classes and John would pretend to understand what she was explaining. They would talk in hushed voices about Stiles. The She–  John, concerned, would ask for her opinion and advice as if she was a part of this, as if they were a team. She felt… burdened with the responsibility, and then not. She felt _trusted_.

She started opening up to him about her own issues. How she felt like she would never uncover the entirety of her powers. How she felt like an ocean, calm but threatening, like a bottomless pit for malignant forces to try and fill. One morning she was telling him about String Theory and how she wished there was a universe out there where she was perfectly human and perfectly shallow, like a pool of clear, calm water. She realized she had never opened up this way with anyone. Except Allison. She started crying before the thought was fully formed in her mind and the Sh– John was wrapping her into one of those familiar, comforting Stilinski hugs.

That was that. Stiles and Lydia went back to Boston shortly after the New Year, rested and well-fed. John’s number was programmed into Lydia’s phone, with a promise to drop by at Spring Break.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter will be up sometime next week. it will hopefully take less editing.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a short one! I divided chapter 4 in two because it was too long (for me to edit in one go).   
> Hope you like it anyway.

Stiles starts awake, neck stiff from sleeping at a weird angle in the hospital chair. He blinks at the yellow light flooding the room, arching his back to dispel the various aches of an awkward nap. He looks over to the bed, notices his dad, awake. He’s sitting up as much as he probably can, smiling up at Derek, who’s standing next to his bed. 

Stiles groans loudly to signal his return to the land of the conscious. His dad turns toward him, his face a mixture of expectant, sheepish and cautiously happy. His very tattered, blue face. Stiles is out of his chair in a heartbeat, leaning over his dad to give him the gentlest, most careful hug of his life. His dad grips his elbow with his good hand and doesn’t let up for a while. As Stiles pulls away he notices Derek has taken a step back from the bed. He’s looking pointedly at the door on the other side of the room.

Stiles clears his throat, voice still a little croaky as he greets the two men. “Hi dad. Hey again, Derek.”

Derek avoids looking directly at him. “Hi, again. I’m, uh- gonna go… get a coffee. You want something?”

Stiles could definitely do with a cup of coffee. Or twelve. “Yeah, please. Milk, two sugars.”

Derek nods once. He offers a small but sincere smile to the Sheriff before he leaves the room.

When the door has swung shut behind Derek, Stiles drags the armchair as close to the bed as possible with his foot, sits back on it with his elbows bracketing his dad’s forearm. He looks up at him, smiles as reassuringly as he can. “Hey old man. How you feeling?”

There’s something like endurance and deja vu in his dad’s expression. Something like resignation. Like this has happened a thousand times, this configuration of one of the Stilinski men in a hospital bed and the other in a chair next to him, and it will probably keep happening, and though it never gets easier, they’re getting used to it. It’s sad, and it’s life, and Stiles hates Beacon Hills for making them this way. He resolves to work harder at convincing his dad to move. 

John gives a tiny, delicate sigh as he gazes down at his son. “A little banged up. And old. Nothing too terrible.” He starts giving Stiles a bashful smirk, but it turns into a wince as it pulls at his bruises. 

Stile brings his hand up, touches the bruise blooming around his dad’s eye carefully. “Yeah. We’ve seen worse right? What’s a sprained wrist, bruised ribs, a giant knee and a blue face for a Stilinski man?” Stiles says softly.

His dad’s answering smile is a little wet and a lot fond. Grateful. They look at each other for a moment, just taking in each other’s presence. They haven’t been in the same room in… almost eight months? Man. Time is slipping through his fingers, it seems.

Stiles frowns. He tries to emulate the Serious Stilinski Look his dad used on him when he was little, looks directly into his dad’s eyes. “Are you okay? Don’t lie to me.”

The Sheriff of Beacon Hills deflates a bit in his hospital bed. He gives his son a sheepish look. “I am okay, son. Sorry I had you worried.” He takes Stiles hand in his good one, squeezes. His skin is calloused and paper-y. Stiles is home.

He has to ask, though. He has to know. “What happened? Do you remember?”

His dad looks down at their joined hands, his face blank. He looks back up at Stiles, eyes a bit glassy, like he’s trying to remember a detail from a decade-old memory. 

“Dad?’ Stiles asks, concerned.

In a millisecond he’s back, blinking at Stiles, smiling as much as his bruised face will allow. “Sorry. The memories are a bit blurry.”

Stiles smiles back, strained. “That tends to happen when you bang your head in a car crash”, he says, aiming for banter and missing by a mile.

His dad inclines his head, conceding the point. He looks at Stiles, steady, as he speaks. “I was distracted by the radio, trying got get a squad car’s location. I didn’t see the stop sign… The cruiser took the brunt of it.” He sighs, looks to the foot of the bed, probably trying to assemble the jigsaw puzzle of his memories. Stiles knows how that feels, from countless concussions in the pre-Adderall years, from the nogitsune, from unending panic attacks. He knows. “I think the woman’s car needs some basic repairs”, his dad adds. “She’s fine, Stiles, it’s all fine.” He pats Stiles’ hand reassuringly.

Something in Stiles’ throat feels like lead. “No, dad.” He shakes his head. “Lydia told me the woman’s car was totalled. She- she was fine, but the car’s DOA. Lydia’s dealt with the insurance.” 

The Sheriff frowns at him. “You sure?”

Stiles nods slowly, squeezing his dad’s hand tighter. “Yeah, dad. I didn’t see the report myself, but. Lydia said so.”

His dad looks to the foot of the bed again, lost in his own thoughts. He looks back to Stiles with a shrug. “Well, if Lydia said so….” The unbruised side of his mouth lifts up tentatively. “I did bang my head pretty hard, I guess.”

Stiles huffs a nervous laugh, tries to smile back. “I’ll check it out, don’t worry dad. I’ll get Parrish to send me the report, I’ll contact the woman, we’ll check it out, don’t-” He cuts himself off. His dad is giving him the “don’t start” look.

“Son, you will not bug my deputies.” He tries to cross his arms to assume standard Sheriff position, but his IV and cast get in the way. He settles on looking put out. “I trust them to do their job as well as they were trained to. I trust Lydia, too. Leave them be. I’m okay.”

Stiles wants to argue. It’s not fine. They’re in a hospital,  _ again _ . In Beacon Hills,  _ again _ . He’s supposed to trust Jordan Parrish to do his job and not complain? He’s not sure he can. But, for his dad, he’ll try.

He makes a big show of rolling his eyes and slumping back into the armchair. “Fiiiine”, he drawls. He’s rewarded by an amused glint in his dad’s eye. 

“Before you continue with the interrogation”, he tells Stiles, “you check your phone. It wouldn’t stop buzzing while you were drooling on the armchair.”

Stiles finds his phone in his jacket pocket, and sure enough, there’s a dozen missed calls and texts. He throws his dad an apologetic glance, mouthing Andy’s name as an explanation, and heads for the door.

Once in the hallway, Stiles ignores the few phone calls from the office and the texts from Scott. He presses the call button next to Andy’s number.

::

Andy is both worried for his dad and quietly supportive, listening to Stiles rant and finally get his freak out out of the way. He’s leaving for his book signing tour and won’t be home for a month and a half, more if the New York and LA signings go well. Stiles is going to miss him.

“I’ll miss you. Sucks we didn’t have time to say goodbye.”

Stiles can hear Andy’s sly smile through the phone. “I’ll call you on Friday when I leave.”

Stiles shakes his head. “No, I meant a proper goodbye. A  _ naked _ goodbye.”

Andy’s voice is velvet in Stiles’ ear. “Ah, yes.  _ Sucks _ .” Flirty motherfucker. “You could come join me in San Francisco for the weekend, if you want. I believe I mentioned that. Many, many times.”

Stiles grins at nothing. “Yeah, you did. You’re not very subtle, you know.”

“Right back at you”, Andy answers with a chuckle. He sounds so fond, like comfort and warmth. Stiles kinda hates book signing tours.

“I’ll see how it goes here, and I’ll keep you posted on our possible romantic meet-up in the gay capital of love.”

Andy sighs, drawn out. “Fine. As long as you never, ever call it that again.”

Stiles already misses this conversation, and it’s not over yet. “I’ll try to restrain myself.”

“Alright, give  your dad a hug for me. Don’t bug him too much. And don’t worry. I’m sure everything will be fine.”

Fine. Awful word. He doesn’t remember one thing in his life ever being fine. His ADHD, his mom’s death, Scott being bitten, the waves upon waves of supernatural bullshit they had to fend off for years, college, falling in love, nothing had ever been fine. So why does he want to believe so bad they could be?

He calls Lydia quickly. She’s at Jordan’s getting ready. Stiles asks her again about the car, still rattled by his dad’s reaction. Lydia lets her displeasure known, but she agrees to let him take a look at the insurance paperwork she filed. By the time he’s done with the call, Derek’s rounding the corner with two steaming cups of coffee. As he approaches, Stiles notices he’s in his deputy uniform. He averts his eyes as subtly as possible, which is to say not very much at all, shuffles awkwardly. Derek stops next to him, hands him a cup wordlessly. It’s the good stuff from the coffee shop down the road, not the vending machine crap. He takes an appreciative sip and hums contentedly before meeting Derek’s eyes.

“Thanks, deputy. Shall we?”

Derek nods, the tip of his ears tinting a delicate pink. He holds the door to the Sheriff’s room open for Stiles to step through.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> don't get too excited about the frequent updates: this is the last one before Oct 31/Nanowrimo.
> 
> super unbeta'ed and barely edited.

“So, dad”, Stiles says into his coffee once he’s settled back into the armchair.

The Sheriff looks over at Derek with a long suffering sigh. “Here we go.”

“How come you never mentioned you hired Derek as a deputy?” he asks, steepling his fingers like a villain in a Bond movie. He knows it’ll annoy his dad, and an annoyed Dad is an unsettled one who’s more likely to answer Stiles’ nagging questions.

The Sheriff rolls his eyes and huffs at him. Good. Stiles is already winning. “I did mention Derek, son, I’m sure. At least when he applied, what was it,” he directs at Derek, “a year, two years ago?”

Derek nods into his coffee, clearly wishing he could disappear into it.

“I did mention him, see? I’ve just been. Uhm. You haven’t seemed very- interested. When I talked about the station.”

Stiles looks down at his hands. Since his change in major freshman year of college, his dad and he have been very careful when discussing police matters. They’ve found other ways to connect but. They had to work around this new boundary Stiles had to put in place for his own survival. It rarely comes up anymore. It’s still very awkward, though.

Derek clears his throat, effectively breaking the tension in the room. “I should probably-”, he says, stepping toward the door.

The Sheriff makes a movement to catch Derek’s arm with his good hand. “No, Derek, son, it’s fine. Don’t-”

Stiles shakes his head, talks over his dad. “I’m sorry Derek, I didn’t mean to… It’s just weird, you know?” Two eerily identical frowns are turned on him.

“What’s weird?” his dad asks. He looks so worn out and tired in his white gown. Stiles can't really remember why he thought having this conversation now would be a good idea. But it's too late to back down.

“Well”, Stiles gestures to Derek, trying to encompass the whole of him with a flailing motion. “Derek, you know. Hale.” Both men are still looking at him like he’s crazy. “ _As an officer of the law_ ”, Stiles elaborates.

He’s still getting twin blank, dumbfounded looks. He throws his hands up in frustration. “You arrested him! He was a person of interest in murder cases! Twice! He was on the run from the police- from _you_ \- and threatened me into hiding him in my room! How- why would you hire him?”

Derek’s shoulders are up to his ears once Stiles is done almost-yelling, and his dad is giving Stiles the Disappointed Look. Uh oh.

“Stiles”, he starts, all disapproving voice and parental authority. Stiles is eight and tried microwave the VCR again. (What? It was for _science_.) “I get that this comes as a surprise to you - though I’m sure I’ve mentioned Derek before - and you’re tired and under stress. But you’re not being fair. You know this.” Stiles gulps. “It’s been over a decade. We’ve all grown up since then. Learned from our mistakes”, he says pointedly, and yeah, he has a point. Stiles wouldn’t like anyone judging him today for the kid he was at sixteen.

Stiles feels thoroughly scolded. He knows he took out his stress at the situation (dad, Beacon Hills, hospital bed) on Derek. Old habits die hard. He glances up, gives his dad a sheepish look. He looks at Derek until his head lifts up enough for them to lock eyes. “I’m sorry, Derek. That was shitty.”

His dad huffs a laugh, mutters “damn right it was”. He looks at Derek with a smile, pats at the bed until Derek makes his way back next to him, looking slightly less uncomfortable. “Now that Stiles is done being a petulant child” - “Rude”, Stiles mutters under his breath, taking a sip of lukewarm coffee - “tell me, Derek. How are things at the station?”

Derek fills the Sheriff in on the going-ons at the station, a corner of his mouth lifted in a grateful smile, while Stiles stews in the last dregs of his shame. A knock at the door makes him jump, spit out the damp piece of his sleeve he’d been chewing on. Damn. He hasn’t done that in a long time. He used to destroy entire hosts of hoodies that way during finals week. Andy hated it. Stiles can see why.

Lydia’s head pokes into the room. She breezes past Derek and Stiles, deposits a delicate kiss on John’s cheek. He positively glows as she swipes it with her thumb to remove the lipstick stain. She sits primly on the edge of his bed and assesses him with the focus of a true scientific genius. Before the door can swing shut, a tall creature comes into the room. It’s made of uniform-clad legs and a gigantic, aggressively orange flower arrangement.

As Derek quickly steps up to help the creature divest itself of its orange head, two big, dark eyes framed by long dark hair come into view. The Sheriff is distracted from Lydia long enough to greet the newcomer. “Deputy Greer. Good to see you.”

The deputy offers a tiny smile and a wave, making no move to step closer to the Sheriff’s bed. She nods her thanks at Derek as he wrestles the giant bouquet on the end table by the window. “T- the whole station chipped in, for the flowers.” Stiles did not expect her voice to be so deep. “They’re from all of us. T- to wish you… you know”, she trails off, clearly uncomfortable having everyone’s eyes on her. Or maybe it’s about how awful the bouquet is.

“Jenna picked me up, gave me a ride here”, Lydia adds smoothly. “We picked out the flowers together.” The deputy sends her a quick, grateful smile. She looks young, maybe younger than Stiles and Lydia. Her long limbs seem too big for her thin frame. Her skin is pale and she’s curved slightly inward, chin dipped and shoulders hunched. What strikes Stiles most are her eyes, dark brown and framed by delicate eyelashes. They look slightly too big for her face. They seem familiar to Stiles, but he’s not sure why.

Noticing Stiles’ staring, the deputy turns towards him, looking unsure. The Sheriff takes his eyes off Lydia long enough to make the introductions. “Thank you, Jenna. I don’t think you’ve met my son Stiles yet.” Stiles can see it in her face when she reconciles the man in front of her with the pictures of the Sheriff’s desk. Her mouth forms a silent “oh”. Yeah. Stiles knows that “oh”. It’s usually followed, after new deputies hear him speak for the first time, by an unimpressed “ah”.

Stiles waves from his post on the armchair, a smirk playing at his lips. She nods back at him hesitantly. Derek claps a hand on her shoulder, stepping closer to her to talk quietly. They’re clearly at ease together, like they’re used to working in sync. There’s something here, a whole life and people Stiles has never met, that his dad is part of. It feels… foreign. Like a bad taste in Stiles’ mouth.

Stiles slips out of the room. He finds the nurses’ station, successfully charms (bugs) one of them into calling his dad’s doctor. The doctor, a tall, bald guy in his late forties, tells Stiles precisely what Lydia already told him, shows him charts and slips in unpronounceable words in every sentence. Determined not to let himself get steamrolled, Stiles nods and asks questions and pushes until he gets the doctor’s express assurance that yes, despite a previous fear of brain damage, his dad is totally fine, yes, he’ll be discharged tomorrow afternoon, yes, he’ll be under strict orders of bed rest for at least two weeks, not a day less. Stiles shakes the poor doctor’s hand, satisfied, before slipping back into the room.

Lydia’s telling John all about the experiment she’s working on and must go back to. The Sheriff is, as usual, proud and impressed. Stiles is, as usual, grateful for her presence in their life. Both are slightly dejected at the prospect of her leaving.

A few minutes later, a nurse comes in to tell them that visiting hours are over and to please get the hell out. Not a minute too soon, it seems, if the slow blinks of his dad’s eyes are any indication. Lydia hugs the Sheriff carefully, whispering something in his ear. Derek and Jenna shakes his hand and take leave. Stiles squeezes his shoulder and gives him a long, intense look, promising to come back the next day. The Sheriff smiles up at him, already half asleep.

::

Derek acts as chauffeur again. Lydia left for the airport with Deputy Jenna after she gave Stiles the longest hug of his life. Stiles was fully prepared to walk to his dad's house from Beacon Hills Memorial, but Derek offered. Stiles has been a tiny bit of an ass with Derek, and honestly he’s kind of drained. He accepts quietly and gets into the car. He watches Beacon Hills pass by through the window. He should probably apologize, now that it’s only the two of them, but he can’t bring himself to. It seems like it would take less energy to just let the guilt eat away at him.

“Should I pick you up, tomorrow?” Derek asks as he makes a right turn at an intersection. “To go see your dad, I mean.”

Stiles shakes his head. “No, dude, it’s fine. The Jeep’s at the house.” He looks back at the trees. “I’m pretty sure it still runs.”

Derek huffs a tiny laugh. “Doubtful.”

Tension slowly seeps out of Stiles’ body. Maybe Derek, this older, more settled Derek, doesn’t hold grudges. Maybe he knows Stiles feels like a shithead. Maybe that’s enough. He can’t help but poke at the bruise, though. “So, how do you like it? Working at the station.”

Derek steals a glance at him. He answers easily, eyes back on the road. “It’s nice. Great team. Great Sheriff”, he says, mouth ticking up. “It’s pretty quiet. Mostly old ladies and cats and… car accidents”, he finishes lamely, reminding them both where they just came from.

Stiles is exhausted. And there’s this thing, nagging at his brain, this buzzing, this worry, this old remnant of ADHD that made him investigate and question and push back and kept him alive for so many years. This thing telling him this is Beacon Hills and a car accident involving the Sheriff, his _dad_ , is not just a car accident. And he just. He needs to vent. And Derek is there. So.

“So, what do you think?” he asks Derek, louder than he intended. “This seems legit to you? Just a car accident?”

Derek takes a second at a stop sign to look at him, face serious. A touch disbelieving.

“I mean, Derek. This is Beacon Hills.”

Derek is silent but for the minute shrug of his shoulders. Stiles needs him to get on board.

“Where were _you_ last night when the accident happened?”

Derek swerves into the driveway of his dad’s house, puts the car in park and turns towards Stiles, all in one swift motion. “Stiles”, he says, tone biting. There he is. Good old Derek Hale. Stiles smirks. Derek blinks, seems to reign himself in. “I was off duty last night. Sleeping. Parrish called me in at around 5”, he tells Stiles, softer.

Stiles is not done pushing. “Dude. I’m not crazy. I’m not – okay, only slightly – overreacting. My dad doesn’t get into traffic accidents, much less causes them. He doesn’t downplay what lands him in the hospital. He doesn’t act like nothing happened. It’s weird, alright? It’s weird that I’m here and he’s lying in a hospital bed pretending he was just distracted for a second and like the cruiser isn’t totaled.” He takes a breath, holds it, lets it simmer inside of him. “My dad’s not a liar, even for my own benefit. We don’t– we don’t lie to each other. Not since—“ He can’t make himself say it.He can't- he-

Derek puts a hand up in front of him, giving him something to focus on and stave off the oncoming panic attack. “Or”, he says, tone gentle like he’s talking someone down from the ledge, “it might just be what it looks like. Your dad’s... not getting any younger. He might just be too proud to admit he needs glasses.” He sighs, looks over at the dark house in front of them. Without the Sheriff in it, it looks like an empty shell. “Beacon Hills isn’t- what it used to be. You’re too used to the worst case scenario to envision anything else.” His tone of voice is sympathetic, a shoulder squeeze, a pat on the back. Stiles wants to lean into it. Or punch him in the face. But Derek might be right. Maybe. Just this once. A car accident is just a car accident.

::

He can’t help it. His mind has run away from him, trying to unravel every little piece of information he took away from today to make it into something bigger, something meaningful. He thinks and thinks and thinks as he waits for the water to boil, slumped over the counter in his dad's kitchen. Tonight’s feast is pasta with ketchup. Andy would be proud.

Nothing makes sense. Not the car accident, not the way his dad acts like it’s no big deal. He eats and cleans up on autopilot, replaying in his mind everything his dad said, Lydia’s hand on his shoulder, the crease in Derek’s brow when he told Stiles he was overreacting. He makes a mental note to pounce on Parrish the next day and demand to read the police report on the crash.

Stiles walks upstairs up to his old bedroom, a coffee mug in hand. He pauses outside his dad’s bedroom, peaks inside. Nothing seems different at first glance. Same old, washed out bedspread. Same messy sheets, bed undone. Same dusty picture on the nightstand. Drugstore-bought reading glasses next to a forgotten glass of water. A book his dad will never finish beside a flowery lamp that used to belong to his mother. Abandoned slippers at the foot of the bed. Same old, same old. Stiles might have felt better if he’d found the place thrashed.

He makes himself comfortable in his old single bed, the freshly changed Batman sheets crisp and familiar. Nothing makes sense, he thinks obsessively, over and over again. If Andy were there, he would lay a hand on Stiles' shoulder, scrub a little at his neck, use that soft, fond mocking tone of his to tell Stiles to take a break, come eat something babe, there’s pizza, just let it go for a minute. And Stiles… would. Where no man, woman or monster has succeeded before, Andy has. He has the power to make Stiles Stilinski let something go. That’s why Stiles loves him. That’s one of the reasons why. Probably.

But Andy's home in Boston, so Stiles sips at his coffee, head against the headboard, wondering if he used to love or hate this room. He feels that way about everything in this town: the school, the Sheriff’s station, the Preserve, the whole fucking district of abandoned warehouses where Derek had his loft… he feels like he’s grown up in all those places, that they made him. But what they all went through to get there doesn’t feel worth it.

Almost a decade later, it doesn’t feel worth it that he’s here, free of the void and the nightmares, and that Allison isn’t. He doesn’t feel worth it. Stiles scoots down the bed, buries his face in his old, shapeless pillow. He decides he really fucking hates this room and this whole town, for making him nostalgic of his younger self. All that sixteen year old smartass had to show for himself was brash bravery, shit luck, and a boatload of fear and pain. For making him Derek Hale-levels of broody.

The old Derek, that is. The one who slept in the ashes of his house and got impaled with pipes and had the worst taste in paramours. Not the Derek of today, the bashful deputy who shares quiet smiles and knowing looks with his father. Stiles knows nothing about this Derek, except that he likes coffee. Does he still have the loft? Is he better at picking his lovers now? God, he’s tired.

He sends Scott a text, asking if he wants to hang out tomorrow. Really, the text just says “Halo?” and a smiley face, but Scott will crack the code, probably. He waits a few minutes, but no answer comes. Figures. Stiles falls asleep in a huff.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter: the real fun begins


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> who knew this would happen? not me.   
> I won't promise regular updates bc I never actually do that.   
> thanks anyway for reading and commenting and kudosing and not sending me death threats. u guys r nice. <3

Lydia is sitting cross-legged on his brand new coffee table, methodically taking apart his laptop. His gaming laptop. Fuck, it’s his favorite one. She’s humming a song as she carefully breaks the video chip, microscopic piece by microscopic piece. Something catchy but annoying, something his mom used to sing while doing laundry. “Copa-copacabaaaana”, Lydia sings under her breath. With Barry Manilow's exact voice. No, wait.

Stiles shoots upright just as his phone’s tiny speaker declares that music and passion were always the fashion. The call goes to voicemail. Stiles doesn’t reach for it right away. He sits there and stares at the darkness in the room, heaving, legs trapped into his Batman sheets. He lifts his hands high, level with his eyes. Seven, eight, nine, ten. Ten fingers. Not a dream. Fuck.

“Her name was Lola”, Stiles phone’s starts serenading him again. The Captain America clock next to him reads 5:17am. What fresh hell is this. He fumbles to pick it up before it stops ringing.

“What now?” he asks in an aggravated, gravelly voice.

“Stiles”, says a placating voice on the other end of the line. Parrish. Ugh.

“Jordan”, Stiles answers. He lets it hang, like he can’t fathom a worst insult to Jordan Parrish than just calling him by his first name, without tacking on a “deputy” or at the very least his last name. Probably, Parrish doesn’t care. But Stiles imagines he does, and it makes him feel better anyway. 

“It’s 5:17 in the morning, if Steven Grant Rogers is to be believed”, Stiles adds. There. That’s obnoxious and cryptic enough. Parrish finds nothing to answer to that.“Get on with it”, Stiles prompts.  


“Stiles”, Parrish says in the same tone. That‘s how he always says Stiles’ name. Parrish has two modes: earnest, competent cop and asleep. Stiles can’t stand that guy.

“Parrish”, Stiles parrots.

“You should be sitting down for this. No, wait, I should come get you. That would be better.”

What on earth is the fucking problem of Jordan Parrish? Stiles wants to break his fucking spine. 

“Parrish! What the fuck is going on? My dad— is he okay?” As he utters the words, he  _ knows _ . He just knows.  


The silence on the other end of the line is confirmation enough. Finally, Parrish unclenches. 

“The Sheriff, your dad, he… left. Disappeared. We don’t know, yet. The hospital’s being searched, we’re combing through the perimeter. Stiles.”

Stiles’ brain might have exploded. He’s pretty sure he heard a boom. He’s pretty sure he’s yelling at Parrish through the phone, too, but there’s no way to tell for sure, because his brain exploded. 

“WHAT. PARRISH, WHAT. ARE YOU SAYING. My dad’s missing? WHAT THE EVERLOVING—PARRISH! WHAT’S HAPPENING?”

There’s static and gibberish on the line, like Parrish’s holding the phone away from his face to talk to someone else. 

“Stiles, we are pulling all our resources to find him. It might be nothing. He might be on his way to your house right now. We don’t know yet.”

“I swear to God, Parrish, if you say that one more time…” Stiles seethes.

“Stiles.” Again, with the placating tone. Stiles is going to bash that guy’s head in. “We will find him. I’m sending a deputy to get you. Someone will stay at the house too, in case the Sheriff turns up there. Stay put.”

With a click, the phone goes dead in Stiles’ hand. Stiles debates calling Parrish again just to hang up on him. Decides on not. Looking around, Stiles realizes he’s sitting cross-legged on the kitchen counter, barefoot. He has no recollection of getting there. That is… not great.

Stiles waits for the panic to engulf him. Any time now. He throws on a hoodie, finds a pair of clean socks and waits for the crippling fear and the shaking hands. It doesn’t come. Instead, there’s a lot of grey. A lot of blank. A lot of bleak certainty that the world has gone to shit and Stiles will have to try and make sense of it, with very little help from the outside. He debates calling Lydia, but decides that her having an aneurysm on the phone right now would be counterproductive.

He’s tying his shoes and the panic still hasn’t come. He contemplates the facts. Barely a day ago... fuck, it was only yesterday, he got the exact same type of phone call. His dad in the hospital. A car accident he  _ caused _ . Two cars totaled, but no casualties. Bruises, cuts, minor concussion for his dad. The other car’s driver is fine. Everyone saying it’s nothing, except Stiles. New faces at the station Stiles has never heard of. A tired but tidy house. Nothing out of the goddam ordinary except for his dad in the hospital. His dad missing. His dad missing. His dad missing.

Stiles keeps repeating it like a mantra as he takes the keys to the garage and the Jeep out of the key box in the foyer. He opens the garage, takes a moment to examine the Jeep. He’ll have to put air in the tires at some point. But, provided it starts, it looks good as… well, not new. As good as it was looking the day Stiles left it behind eight years ago. Stiles gets in and is assaulted by the smell of leather holster and his dad’s cologne. The old man has been driving it. Or at least, sitting in it. Stiles is overcome by a wave a unwelcome grief, followed by a spike of panic. He turns the key into the ignition to dispel it. He jumps three feet into the air when the radio blasts out: “What time is it? Party time!” Old man’s got jokes. Missing missing missing, Stiles’ brain chants as he cuts off the stereo on Zefron’s dulcet voice.

As he backs out of the driveway, a cruiser comes screeching to a halt in front of the house, blocking him in. Derek springs out of the car. Stiles spares a second to be irritated at Parrish for sending his apparently designated handler to babysit him. He keeps backing out slowly. Derek’s at the driver-side window a second later. 

“Stiles, stop!” he yells without much conviction. He knows. He sees it in Stiles face. The blank determination. The absence of fire. The absence of care. Stiles keeps backing out, until he’s half an inch away from the cruiser. Then he stops. Because, well. The crash would without a doubt hurt the Jeep more, and Stiles needs the wheels. Derek is gripping his car's door, looking at him. Stiles thinks he’s about to use the same placating tone Jordan did, but he doesn’t. 

“Wait”, Derek says. He runs to the cruiser, parks it in front of the neighbors’ house. Stiles waits. Derek comes over to the driver-side window again. “Thank you.” Then he rounds the car and gets into the passenger seat. Stiles appraises him there. It doesn’t look right. Whatever. He backs out of the driveway.

::

Derek directs him to the hospital as if Stiles is new to town. Like he hasn’t driven to this wretched place thousands upon thousands of times. Still, Stiles lets Derek dole out precise directions to spear the silence wrapping around them like a blanket. His short instructions keep him grounded. That’s probably what Derek was setting out to do anyway. Uh.

Stiles parks close to the gaggle of squad cars crowding the entrance of BH Memorial. He follows a few paces behind Derek to the cluster of uniforms and radio static, chewing on his mangled hoodie sleeve.

As he approaches, the faces of the officers become clearer in the fluorescent lights. Deputy Reynolds is talking to a nurse. He’s greying at the temples. Tara and a few other officers he’s seen around the station are redirecting curious bystanders. Deputy Jenna is talking into her radio, close to the electric doors. When she sees him, she gives him a sad, timid wave. He nods back. Next to Parrish, a petite deputy with a booming voice is giving orders to the officers remaining, hands spread over a map of Beacon Hills and what looks like a blueprint of the hospital. Stiles wonders why they’re not operating out of the station right now. He guesses it’s because no one seems to have enough authority to direct the search.

Parrish breaks out of the group when he sees Stiles and Derek. He comes toward them, opens his mouth to speak. Stiles braces himself. 

“Stiles”, Parrish says, placating. Stiles swings a fist. Derek blinks at it. It connects with the side of Parrish’s mouth with a satisfying crunch. Jordan is propelled a few steps back. Stiles’ hand explodes with pain. Derek blinks some more.

The scene is frozen for a second, the only noise the static of the radios. Then Derek hooks a thumbs over his shoulder. 

“I’ll get some ice”, he says. Everyone returns to their previous occupation, giving Stiles and Parrish a wide berth. Parrish is poking at his mouth, checking for blood. Stiles thinks about swinging another fist, but his hand protests. He starts asking a question, he’s not sure which one, but Parrish, still holding on to his jaw gingerly, interrupts him. 

“Riley here”, Parrish points at a pudgy, stressed out deputy, “was on surveillance at the Sh- your dad's door all night. He checked on him at 3am, found his room empty. He swears the Sheriff was in his room last time he checked when he took over surveillance from Jenna at 9pm, and nobody got in or out the room after that.”

Stiles looks at pudgy, stressed out Riley and his bald spot. He’s nodding fervently at Parrish’s words, sweating profusely. Stiles remembers him from when he was less pudgy and less stressed out. He got hired a few months before Stiles left Beacon Hills. Stiles has no reason to doubt his word or his ability if Parrish doesn’t. He still wants to beat him up with a baseball bat.

“He checked the bathroom, then the nurse station”, Parrish continues his account methodically, flexing his jaw. “The cafeteria, the foyer. He checked with security. They couldn’t find the Sh- your dad anywhere, or any trace of violence or struggle. Nothing that would call attention. So he called in reinforcements. Two patrols were dispatched, they made several sweeps of the hospital with the security teams. A team is currently reviewing security tapes with full cooperation of the hospital staff.”

Stiles can’t fault the efficiency of Parrish’s report. He truly is the model cop. The deputy cuts himself off as Derek walks back to them, handing each of them a pack of blue ice. Stiles applies it carefully to his screaming knuckles. Of course this asshole would have a face you’d break your hand on. His cheekbones look chiseled out of stone. As Parrish dabs his cheek and jaw with the ice pack, Derek goes on.

“No sign of struggle or force in the room. His personal effects – clothes, shoes, coat and wallet – are missing. It seems he changed before—“ he cuts off at Stiles pained face. “At first viewing, the security footage shows no sign of him, or anyone suspicious entering or leaving the room.” Stiles nods. Then he nods again. Everything seems perfectly handled. Perfectly logical. Perfectly efficient. His dad couldn’t have done better if he was handling the disappearance. 

Damn, if it was anybody else, there wouldn’t even be an investigation yet. They would just wait a handful of hours to see if the person turned up somewhere. Stiles’ dad might still turn up at his house, or at the station, disoriented and confused but in one piece. He might not be missing. Missing missing missing, Stiles’ brain keep chanting, keeping rhythm with the blood pumping in his knuckles.

Parrish takes back the lead of the report. “We have alerted the neighboring counties. A squad car is circling the major roads leading to critical locations: your house, the station, Nurse McCall’s house—“

“Melissa?” Stiles interrupts. “Why would you—“ He catches Derek throwing Parrish a look, a minute shake of his head.

Parrish swats at it like a fly. He takes on a careful, soft tone. “Melissa McCall and your dad were— there was a… relationship. Of a, uhm. Romantic nature. There. Maybe.” He seems to understand what Derek’s look was about as Stiles eyeballs him. His head shrinks minutely into his shoulders.

“There was a WHAT?” Stiles shouts. Parrish cringes and ducks, as if expecting another blow. The way Derek’s hand are raised, bracing to catch Stiles were he to fling himself at Jordan, shows he’s not the only one. But Stiles’ hand is numb. And his face. And possibly other internal and external body parts. His dad and Melissa? How doesn’t he know this? 

He’s been teasing his dad with Melissa’s big eyes and take no shit attitude for ages. He’s shown how cool and okay and supportive he’d be of a possible relationship on many, many occasions. Hasn’t he? Why yet another secret? Another thing that seems common knowledge in Beacon Hills, and he has to hear it from Jordan Parrish’s bruising mouth in the hospital parking lot at six in the morning on a Saturday. After his dad went missing. Missing missing missing.

Stiles comes back to himself and levels a glare at a sheepish-looking Parrish. Derek is gone again. Stiles heaves a deep, long-suffering sigh. He takes a second figuring out exactly what he wants to say, because every time he opens his mouth, a jumble of sentences tries to come out all at once. 

“Okay, Parrish", he finally settles on. "Thank you. for everything you’re doing. To find him. And sorry about the-", he gestures to the ice pack. 

Parrish clearly wasn’t expecting that. Civility. Calm. So un-Stiles-like. He shrugs.  


“It’s fine. I probably… deserved it”, Parrish answers. It's as sincere as Stiles’ apology was, which is to say: not at all. It’s enough, though. Some semblance of balance is restored to this strange, slanted world where Stiles’ dad is missing and hiding tiny, insignificant and huge, significant things from him. It’s like a prick stuck behind a fingernail, like a shiver up his spine, when he thinks about it. He forces himself to stop thinking about it. Missing missing missing.

A tiny paper cup is thrust under his nose, full of milky brown liquid. Stiles takes it with his good hand. Hot. Thank God. Stiles nods at Derek, who’s holding his own cup, as Parrish goes back to the deputies getting ready to divide themselves into search parties. 

“Do you want to see the room?” Derek asks, careful as always to use as little words as possible.

Stiles knows they’re being nice with him. Giving him special treatment, because he’s the Sheriff’s son, and they admire and respect his dad. Because some of them have seen him grow up, maybe. Because he might be an orphan now, and they pity him. He regrets that thought as soon as he’s had it. Missing missing missing. Not dead. He shakes his head at Derek’s question.

“Let’s go to the station. You’re going to take my statement, right? As a witness or something?” Stiles asks, holding Derek’s gaze. Derek doesn’t break eye contact as he nods. 

“Fine then, let’s go”. He’s already striding toward the Jeep without a glance to spare for the place of all his nightmares and the worst moments of his life and the BCPD uniforms scrambling to keep his life from crumbling down around him.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is tiny but it was my favorite part to write.  
> it got written in April of last year in a tiny coffee shop next to Shakespeare and Co, the famous Parisian bookshop on the banks of the Seine, close to Notre-Dame de Paris. the pink cherry trees were in bloom, spring had just started and I'd just bought my first Allen Ginsberg poem collection. it was a magical afternoon. <3
> 
> anyway nobody cares. thank you for reading! hoping to post more soon.

Derek sits him down in front of a standard, tidy desk. Stiles lifts his paper cup questioningly. Derek’s eyebrow ticks up, but he obligingly refills his coffee cup, weathers Stiles’ disgusted face at the lack of sugar and milk. He asks Stiles precise, methodical questions, most he already knows the answer to. He types his notes quietly while Stiles mulls over incomplete, half-assed, bitter answers. Laying it out like that, the Sheriff’s lies by omission seem huge, and Stiles’ obliviousness looks like negligence.

He wants to ask questions about the surveillance team at the hospital and any previous case that could have affected his dad, any threats he might have received and this goddamn car crash and who was investigating it and why. He wants to grill Derek and the whole station on why this is happening, right now, and why they all seem powerless to stop it. But he keeps sitting there and chewing on his sleeve, damp and gross, chewed beyond salvation.

He attacks the left one, still intact. There’s a storm brewing inside of him. Or maybe, the storm already happened and he’s left behind to pick up the ruins of his destroyed, blown-to-bits mind. Or possibly, the storm is happening right now and Stiles is in shock, barely able to shelter himself from it, running only on adrenaline and survival instinct. Missing missing missing his minds drones on, guilt surging and waning, waves upon a ragged, deserted shore.

Derek finishes typing his report, prints it and has Stiles sign it. He repeats, slow and professional, the steps taken to find the Sheriff. Doesn’t offer any type of mindless reassurance. No “he’s probably fine”, “he’ll turn up in an hour”. Derek has seen enough, he knows what lurks outside. Derek is familiar with catastrophe, and being alone. Stiles appreciates his lack of pity.

The station is practically deserted. A few officers are milling around, some at the front desk answering calls, some filing paperwork. Two deputies are in a separate room, viewing the security tapes from the hospital, taking notes every few seconds. One is monitoring radio calls. Deputies Reynolds and Jenna come in to give updates, then leave again in their cruiser. Jenna leans over the desk to speak to Derek in hushed tones, a familiar gesture that surprises Stiles. Derek Hale doesn’t really share personal space with people.  Stiles asks himself, in his haze of not caring about anything except the disappearance of his dad, if maybe they're more than colleagues. She doesn’t seem like Derek’s type. Too… bland. Not evil enough. Stiles almost feels bad for thinking it, but he's back to not caring already.

It doesn’t seem like what they talk about is relevant to his dad. Stiles is confident that if it was, Derek would tell him. Derek would not spare Stiles pain. That, again, is comforting.

Papers are signed and filed, explanations are given, sleeves are chewed on. Derek offers to drive Stiles back to his house, so he can catch up on some sleep. Derek must know, though, that Stiles will not sleep until his dad is accounted for and safe. But he offers anyway.

There’s nothing for Stiles to do here. Or at home. Or anywhere really. The officers, because they know him and love his dad, will give him all the information they can about their investigation. They will drive him places and answer his questions and weather his moods and take his punches. But they will not include him in the investigation. That’s Illegal. Capital I. Stiles knows this, Derek knows this. So Stiles doesn’t ask, or demands, or begs, or blackmails. He declines Derek’s offer. Says he’ll be alright to drive home by himself. Leaves the station without another word, Derek frowning at his retreating form in the background.

He breathes in the parking lot. Breathing, in general, is a pretty good thing. Humans are encouraged to keep doing it. So Stiles does. He keeps breathing. He finds his car keys, gets into the Jeep. Keeps breathing. He drives in a straight line, until streets are replaced by roads and buildings turn into trees. He drives until he gets to the overlook Scott and he used to hang out at when they were younger and needed to ponder big existential questions, like what exact color Allison’s eyes were. Important stuff. When he gets to the tree they once chained Liam to, he throws the Jeep into park. He finds a really big rock to sit on, checks for signal. Four little bars. Awesome.

He breathes some more as the phone dials Andy’s number for him. He’s really getting the hang of this breathing thing. The phone beeps at him. He tries again. More beeps. Tries his work cell. Nothing. Tries his agent. Beep beep beep. Fuck it. Stiles is about to throw his phone into the bushes when Lydia’s name flashes across it. He swipes violently right.

“Were your Stiles-is-upset senses tingling?” Stiles asks in lieu of a greeting.

“My Stiles-is-getting-himself-in-trouble senses were tingling, yes.” Lydia answers without missing a beat. Stiles adores her.

“What’s up?” he says, because everything else seems dark and pointless.

“Mark did mess up the samples, so there’s that. And you punched Jordan.”

Stiles swears halfheartedly. “That rat bastard ratted me out? What a rat.”

Lydia is done with the reassuring banter. “Are you ok?”

Stiles debates bullshitting to buy himself time. But he fears retribution, so: “No. My dad’s missing.”

Lydia hisses through her teeth. “I heard.” Silence, because what else is there to say?

“Why didn’t you call me?” she asks, not even trying to disguise the hurt in her tone.

Stiles sighs, looks at the view and the surrounding trees. Fog engulfs the edges of the city.

“I didn’t know how to- I still don’t, Lyds. It’s just- I can’t believe this is happening. Again.” He scratches at his neck, his ear, his hair. “Besides, it still might be nothing.”

It’s not nothing. They both know it. The entire police department is out there looking for his father, the Sheriff, who disappeared from his hospital bed overnight with his bruises and his contusions and his broken ribs. It’s not nothing. Missing missing missing.

“I’m taking the first flight out”, Lydia says, authoritative. “Send Derek or Jenna or whoever is available to pick me up.”

Stiles shakes his head. Then he realizes she can’t see him over the phone. “No, Lyds. Don’t. It’s- You’ll have to drop your study.” She grumbles at him. “And there’s nothing you can do here.”

“I can be with you”, she points out, reproving. “You don’t have to Stilinski-martyr your way through this, Stiles. We’re a team.”

“I’m not Stilinski-martyr- ugh. Lyds, just- okay.” He takes the phone off his ear for a second, looks at it in his hand, trying to figure out what he should do, or say. If he wants Lydia here or not. He can’t. He just wants his dad back.

“I just-” he breathes out. “Please, give me a few- hours, days, I don’t know. I need that much, to figure it out. Okay?”

There’s silence over the line. Lydia’s about to agree to something she doesn’t want to do. But she knows him well, she knows he needs space. She’s just not used to giving it to him.

“Fine”, she says, cutting. “Call me the second you change your mind. I will drop everything and come. You know it. Use that knowledge. Don’t be a shithead.” That’s Lydia for “be careful”. Stiles nods, even though she can’t see him.

“I’ll try”, he responds. That’s Stiles for “in your dreams”. She sighs down the phone. He hangs up.

Stiles looks at the trees, at the slowly advancing fog. He wonders if his dad is somewhere in there, or gone far away already. He wonders how much it would cost to have a GPS installed under his dad’s skin, like they do dogs. He looks at the trees some more. Missing missing missing.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you Camp Nano for helping (forcing) me to work on this!!
> 
> and thank you guys for reading!

He’s walking funny. His left heel is scraping against the back of his ancient sneakers. He avoids putting it directly on the floor, throwing his whole balance off. His back and knees hurt. He shivers, balls up his fists in the sleeves of his hoodie. Bits of string tangle with his fingers where he chewed at the fabric. He keeps walking.

He looks up from the cracks in the asphalt and there’s the street he grew up in, his dad’s house. There’s a cruiser parked in the driveway. Leaning against it, is Derek. All dark jeans-y and leather jacket-y. Like the good old days. The bags under his eyes have their own, tiny purple bags, visible even under the fading light of dusk. Goddam fucking hell. Can’t he leave Stiles alone for a minute? Or call, like a normal person? He takes his phone out of his back pocket, checks the screen. Dead. Oh well.

Derek’s leaning on the side of his car, arms folded, staring straight ahead. Stiles walks up to him. Stops. Raises a hand to knock on his shoulder. Doesn’t. Hovers awkwardly. Clears his throat.

Derek startles out of his trance, jumps a little bit at the sight of Stiles standing right next to him. He takes in the damp, shivery mess of him, shoes and pants caked in mud, hair standing up every which way. He frowns one of these truly impressive Hale scowls.

Stiles has a pavlovian reaction to those he developed sometime when he was sixteen. He shrugs his shoulders, asks in his most shitty, teenager-y tone: “What?”

Derek doesn’t take the bait. He keeps leaning and scowling.

“Where have you been?” he asks, calm and collected and judgmental. A worthy opponent.

“I was… out”, Stiles answers lamely.

Derek keeps his eyebrows poised for more judgment. Stiles keeps going.

“To the Preserve. The overlook? To clear my head. Breathe.”

Derek nods slowly, more a “go on” than an “okay”. Stiles shrugs some more because he really doesn’t know why he needs to explain himself to Derek Hale. They’re not husbands. Or, like, friends or something else that makes sense. Fuck. Is he high?

Derek doesn’t wait for Stiles to be done with his brain fart or stroke or whatever.

“Where’s your car?” he asks quietly.

Abruptly, Stiles realizes he’s Jeep-less.

“Oh”, he says, because this is truly an “oh” moment. He fiddles with one of his mangled sleeves so he won’t shrug anymore.

“I guess… I left it at the Preserve?”

His scraped heel, his aching knees, the cold in his bones. They make a lot of sense right now. It seems he might have… hiked… back to the house. That’s what, about ten miles? In the slithering rain. He looks down at himself. And the mud, apparently. He doesn’t remember much of it, except for a general sense of moving through a lot of green. It hits him. _He left his Jeep at the overlook and hiked back to the house_.

He’s _exhausted_. His body sags. Derek stops leaning and catches him a few inches before Stiles’ head and the concrete make each other’s acquaintance. He slings one of Stiles’ arms around his shoulders and helps him walk up to the front door. Then he produces the hidden key from the potted plant next to the door and opens it. How does he know about the hidden key? Stiles can’t form the words.

“Anything new?” he asks instead, hears the words slurring as they come out.

Derek shakes his head as he crab-walks Stiles to the sofa. Stiles is dumped on the lumpy surface like a sack of potatoes. He would protest but words are a feat of prowess. He goes for an “oof” sound that he thinks conveys the right amount of indignation and insult he feels. With a sigh, Derek rids him of his shoes, then leaves the room. Stiles’ eyes are slowly blinking traffic lights as Derek sets a tall glass of water on the coffee table. He drapes an old, dusty afghan he procured from a closet over Stiles.

Stiles wants to tell Derek that he’s amazed he managed to do all that while looking this disapproving. He’ll tell him later. Tomorrow. Yeah, he’ll make a note of it. Tom—

::

Stiles wakes up on a sofa, in his father’s living room. He has a few “the fuck?” seconds before the last few days come crashing back to the shore of his memory. Car accident. Plane. Hospital. Phone call. Punching Jordan. The overlook. Derek Hale’s disapproving eyebrows.

Breathing. He does some more of that while his body comes back online.

Assessing the position of the light in the living room, it must be mid-morning. It’s been more than twenty four hours. Is his dad dead yet? Stiles knows the statistics of finding people the longer they’ve been missing, he doesn’t… He extends his hand toward the coffee table to check the time on his phone, but is met with two problems.

One: his phone isn’t on the coffee table. Two: his arm is flopping uselessly in the air between the sofa and the table, and it’s _hurting like a motherfucker_. Stiles tries to bring his hand up to rub at his face. Ow. Ow ow ow. It’s like his entire body has been waiting for his arm’s signal to start hurting all at once and now there’s no avoiding the many, varied aches caused by a ten-mile hike through the woods in zombie-mode. The lack of sleep and naps in hospital chairs and on lumpy sofas probably don’t help either.

Stiles’ body continues its violent protest as he painstakingly and slowly sits up, still looking for his phone. He spots it on an end table, plugged into a charger, which. He didn’t plug it in. He can barely do it at the end of an ordinary day. He didn’t zombie-plug his phone in last night, did he? He gets up, his knees contemplating mutiny, but as he makes his slow-going way to his phone, his stomach not so much rumbles as emits a sound reserved for 50ft demon-monsters in sci-fi action flicks. Stiles considers how long it has been since he ate something or drank something that wasn’t gross paper cup coffee. He comes up slightly ashamed and absolutely starving.

Trying to stay as immobile as possible, he makes himself a gigantic omelet. He inhales it while he checks his phone. He bypasses yesterday’s calls from the station and Lydia’s texts. He reads a message from Scott that says: “): rain check on Halo?” Amazingly, Stiles doesn’t hurl his phone at a wall. But that might be because he’s worried his arm would fall off if he tried.

He considers the number of missed calls from Andy, and the hour they’re marked at. Seven missed calls. 11pm. Stiles tries to muster genuine annoyance, or resentment, or bitterness. A genuine negative emotion. A strong emotion. For the fact that his boyfriend couldn’t be fucked to pick up the phone when Stiles needed him, in the middle of the – most probably – biggest crisis of his life. In the past seven years. He wishes he could feel more aggravated about that than about Scott’s flakiness. But he can’t. Andy and he exist in a place of emotional stability and adult monotony. They’re safe and boring. Stiles likes them like that. They worked very hard to get there, each step a struggle. Stiles likes that his relationship with Andy is not enshrouded in doubt. It’s easy and safe, like a kiss goodbye when you leave for work in the morning, like an afterthought.

Andy doesn’t belong in this universe, this part of Stiles’… life? Nightmare? Whatever this is, where he has to keep reminding himself to breathe and try to remember how normal human beings act. This alternate reality, so far removed from the life he carved for himself in Boston. This… Beacon Hills tragedy. Stiles has always thought it was better to keep what was good about it (Andy, work, college) as far away from his past as possible. And he still thinks the exact same thing. So he doesn’t call Andy back. If he was truly worried, he would have texted. Andy despises texting. He only does it in emergencies.

Stiles does the dishes, ever so slowly, while thinking about what he would be doing in Boston right now if he wasn’t right here living his worst fears. He’d be working and phone sexing Andy and probably thinking about eventually maybe sanding the kitchen cabinets. He’d skype his dad, probably. His dad. Missing missing missing.

Stiles considers calling the station, to check on things. Maybe thank Derek, for... whatever. Maybe not. But he figures they would call him if they had new information, and hearing them confirm on the phone than they are no closer to finding his dad would be worse. Worser. The worst, possibly. For his mental state. He takes advantage of the fact that he's (mildly) rested, (kind of) fed and (almost) mobile enough to shower and change. Then, he checks the house for… really, anything that could help him find his dad. He’s kinda surprised deputies haven’t come knocking yet. They’re probably giving him time.

But first, he makes coffee.

::

Teenage mutant ninja turtle mug in hand, Stiles starts with the living room, the kitchen, the basement. His dad doesn’t usually keep police files in the house, and Stiles doesn’t find any. In the basement, there are sprawling, elaborate spider webs and rusty fishing equipment. In the kitchen, under the sink, he finds a brown envelope taped to the back of the cupboard with three thousand dollars in hundred dollar bills in it. Behind the coffee mugs, a picture of his mother. In the living room, he finds a truly embarrassing amount of Best of Bruce Springsteen albums and a lot of dust motes under the sofa.

Upstairs he checks the bathroom, the study and his dad’s bedroom. The bathroom is fine, if well stocked in first aid equipment. He figures Melissa McCall is to thank for that. His dad’s bedroom reveals no dirty secret, if for a half-full yellow bottle of sleeping pills and a well-consulted copy of Lydia’s latest version of the bestiary. A few more pictures of his mother slipped into an old paperback. Big Sur. Figures.

The study is no more fruitful. The old desktop computer reveals nothing except for a few logins into the station server and way too many lost Klondike games. The browser history is clean, thank all the Gods. The desk drawers are full of bills, receipts and official looking paperwork. The last drawer contains a less recent bestiary, pages cornered at the usual stuff: werewolf, banshee, spark. Kanima. Ah. His dad could never grasp the concept of that one. Stiles can’t blame him.

Stiles settles into the worn leather desk chair, wheels squeaking under his weight. He takes the time of going through the papers he found, leaving nothing to chance. There are the usual bills, electricity, water, insurance. Receipts to the diner closer to the station, the one his dad likes. Stiles squints at it. Cheeseburger, curly fries, extra bacon. Oh well, in light of recent events, Stiles can’t really muster rightful indignation for his dad not taking care of his heart. Circumstances and stuff. There are a few ticket stubs in there too. For movies Stiles didn’t know he saw, a baseball game down in San Francisco he never told Stiles about. The strangest thing though, has to be the exorbitant receipt for the sushi place downtown. That is simply weird. His dad hates sushi. So does Melissa.

Stiles puts everything back in place carefully, then leans all the way back, chair creaking below him. He watches the sun filter through the half-drawn blinds, the dust accumulate on the computer screen. Everything is suspended in this house: time, sound, memories of their family. Stiles’ breath. He could stay here and wait for life to happen outside of himself. But he can’t. It’s like an itch he has to scratch. A lot of shit doesn’t make sense. People don’t change that much that quickly while nobody notices, and then _disappear_. Stiles’ dad doesn’t disappear. He gets shot, he gets kidnapped, he almost gets mauled by a “mountain lion”. He stands in the way of danger, a lot. But he doesn’t vanish into thin air. He just doesn’t. And Stiles can help. He needs to help. He has to. He has to find his dad.

So he powers his dad’s ancient computer and he hacks into the station’s feed of the traffic cameras. It takes him approximately five minutes to find what he’s looking for. The night from Monday to Tuesday, about 1am. The intersection between Main and Church. It’s all perfectly clear, captured on camera.

He sees his dad’s cruiser, the same one he’s been driving for years, with the Sheriff license plate. He sees his dad at the wheel, grey hair, blue eyes, marked chin. He watches him drive in a straight line, in a sedate, constant pace, never stopping or wavering. He watches him ram into the car in front of him. He sees it, takes it in, lets it sink in. Then he watches it again, just to be sure he’s not wrong about this. There’s nothing accidental at all about this crash. He didn’t even try to break or alter his course. He deliberately rammed into the woman’s car.

Stiles powers the computer down. He puts his head in his hands, elbows planted on the desk, closes his eyes.

Who saw this? Why didn’t they report it? Is the whole station in on it? Why? What is happening? How many Beacon Hills fuckeries will he have to live through?

His phone beeps ominously. It takes him a minute to find the strength to open his eyes, lift his head and fetch his phone. It’s a text from Andy. It reads: “call me :)”.

Andy texted. Wow.

Stiles gets up from his dad’s chair. One movement brings out another and soon enough he can’t not move. He needs to move, to search, to put his hands on some sort of clue, to know where the next step is. And it’s clearly not in this house. He runs down the stairs, looks for his shoes. They’re under sofa, caked in solidified mud. Okay, ugh. He runs back upstairs, rummages in his closet until he finds an old pair of Chucks that might still fit him, probably. He hops down the stairs as he them ties on, incapable of staying in place of a single second. He bounds out the door and is stopped mid-air on his way.

The Jeep. He forgot about the Jeep. The Jeep is supposed to be in the middle of the Preserve, keys in the ignition, waiting for the first teenage delinquent to come lurking by and take it for a joyride. Stiles should have to call someone to drop him off and get it back, or hike the ten miles back himself. But he doesn’t have to. Because the Jeep is in the driveway.

Roscoe’s blue paint is dotted with mud brown and the wheels are covered in fallen leaves, but. It’s here. Intact. Or, as intact as it can be after its long, busy life as a hyperactive, supernaturally-involved, shenanigans-loving kid’s sole object of worship. Stiles tries the door. It opens. The keys are right there, in the ignition, where he left them. The dashboard is cold, so it wasn’t just dropped off. Stiles looks for a note but he can’t find one. Just his car, his baby Roscoe, in the driveway.

Stiles gingerly climbs into the car, testing the Jeep’s suspension and his limb’s resistance at the same time. Nothing to declare. He sighs. He turns the ignition and— "we're aaaall in thiiis togeeeether and we". Stiles scrambles to stop this ignominy from happening. The radio cuts off. He stares at it, horrified. This is a conspiracy.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another Camp Nano miracle. I'm not quite satisfied with this chapter but it is now DONE and OUT.
> 
> thank you guys for reading!

Stiles storms into the station. Or, he tries to. But nobody cares. Because he always storms into the station, and it’s not really storming if people around don’t pay attention. He ignores Deputy Parrish’s semi-surprised, semi-resigned “Stiles” and stops two inches away from Deputy Hale’s desk. He leans over it and slams a paper cup of very hot, very black coffee next to the computer screen. Some of it sloshes to the side and on the corner of a sheet of paper stacked on the desk. Oh well.

Derek stares at the paper cup, eyebrows racing toward his hairline. Stiles snaps his fingers right in his face just to be a shit. “Yeah, it’s the good stuff. From the coffee shop on Main. Get over it.”

Derek takes his time to get over it. His eyebrows make a slow descent to their usual, scowl-y place. He takes the paper cup, brings it up to his lips with a quick glance at Stiles. He takes an appreciative sip, leans back into his chair.

“Stiles”, Derek says, in a voice that says “eat shit”. Stiles has never been more attracted to him. No. What? His brain needs to step the fuck down.

Stiles stares at Derek. Hard. He taps on the desk in the most annoying rhythm he can think of. It’s 1D’s “What makes you beautiful”, for anyone who asks. He won’t break first. Stiles invented this game, and he’s just on the wrong side of relentless.

Derek seems to ponder all of that as he sips his coffee. He puts it down, delicately, out of the way, consults his notes for a second. Then he looks at Stiles.

“Sit down”, Derek says. Stiles does.

He has a tiny flashback to two days ago, Derek being careful and meticulous with him as he took his statement, Stiles nearly out of his mind with worry and shock.

“I’m sure Deputy Parrish would be more comfortable giving you this briefing himself, but we would all like to avoid any further physical altercation, so.” There he is. The sarcastic asshole that Stiles knows and… well, tolerates, really. Stiles can work with this guy.

He leans over, elbows on the desk. “So?”

“So here it is: we haven’t found anything yet. No leads, no clues. We couldn’t find anything out of the ordinary on the hospital surveillance tapes, but we’ve sent them to a lab down in Sacramento to see if they can pick up something.” Derek fiddles with a few files on his desk, continues like he’s ticking boxes on a checklist. “We still have two squad cars on constant loops, and a team checking all the case files that your dad worked on recently. We’re in continued communication with the neighboring counties, and at state level, too.” Derek scrubs at his scruff, sighs. “We’re doing everything we can.” He adds, in a slightly lower voice: “I’ve checked every location he’s been at or could’ve possibly been at last night. I couldn’t find… anything out of the ordinary.”

Derek sighs. Stiles sighs. They hold eye contact. Stiles looks down first.

“Who was supposed to handle the crash investigation?” he asks, looking at his hands fiddling with a stray paper clip on the desk. He doesn’t look up, but somehow he can tell Derek is frowning at him.

“Investigation? It’s a pretty cut and dry accidental crash, Stiles.”

Stiles knew he was going to get this exact answer, but he’s no less annoyed by it. He rolls his eyes and windmills his arms around like he’s lost control of his limbs, gesturing at the whole station around them.

“Accidental? Really?! _Now_?” he asks, voice rising in volume with every word. “My dad gets into a car accident and disappears the next night and nobody is linking both of these events? Nobody’s saying there’s something weird about this?”

Derek is looking at him with wide eyes, palms up. “Stiles, I don’t-“

“Yes!” Stiles explodes, standing up and sending his chair scraping back with a screech. “You don’t! You guys don’t do anything! My dad is _out there_ , maybe he’s _dead_ , and you guys don’t-“

“Stiles!”

Derek’s in his face, eyes boring into his. He’s leaning over his desk, one hand braced on it, the other squeezing Stiles’ wrist. His hand is calloused and warm.

“I was going to say”, he adds calmly, quietly, “I don’t disagree with you.”

Stiles shuts his mouth, teeth clacking together. He makes a show of disengaging his arm from Derek’s grip, fetches his chair with the heel of his right foot, sits back down slowly.

Derek lets out a long, tired breath, scrubs his face with the hand that just held Stiles’ wrist. He sits back down facing Stiles.

“Now that – it happened, it does seem… related, suspicious, I don’t know.” Derek looks over to the side, gaze going aimless and faraway. “But at the time, we… look, we dispatched a team to the crash, it seemed accidental, we didn’t want to bother your dad with - the whole thing was wrapped up and shelved quickly. Now though…”

Stiles swallows, leans toward Derek.

“What now?”

Derek is up and out of his chair again. “Come on.”

Stiles follows him out of habit. “Where?”

Derek stops in front of the Sheriff’s office, Stiles skidding to a stop next to him. “What?”

Derek scratches at his scruff, does that shoulder hunch thing that means he’s not sure something is a good idea.

“We’ve already checked his office, but. I figured you already went through the house, right?”

Stiles nods, tries not to let surprise show on his face. Derek nods back.

“Yeah”, he says. “Told the guys here you would. Jordan figured we’d give you a day before we’d do it ourselves.”

Derek opens the door to the office, gestures Stiles in. “I thought you’d like to do your own check here.” He scratches at his beard some more. “You might find something we’ve obviously… missed. Make the connection between the crash and the- other thing.” He clears his throat, looks out the window, avoiding Stiles’ scrutiny.

“Ok.” Stiles keeps looking at him, confused and cautiously pleased for some reason. “Shouldn’t you, you know, not let a civilian interfere with a police investigation?”

Derek fixes him with a look, keeping him in place. It’s a whole look, honest and raw and deeply, scarily exhausted.

“We’re way past that”, he tells Stiles.

Stiles shrugs at him, at a loss. Derek shakes himself a little bit, breaks eye contact.

“You’re a computer… genius thing, right?” he asks Stiles.

“Yes?” Stiles answers, still immensely unsure about this whole mess of a conversation.

“Ok”, Derek nods a bunch of times in quick succession, looking around the room. ”So let’s say you’re hired pro bono by the station, for this case only. We need… your… talents.”

“Shut up dude, I’m swooning.”

Derek rolls his eyes. Balance in the universe is restored. He nods at Stiles one last time and closes the door behind him.

::

Stiles sits behind his dad’s desk, leans back into the high-tech ergonomic chair Stiles gave him for Christmas one year. He rolls this way and that, making the wheels squeak just so there’s a noise in the room. Timid grey light filters through the blinds, dampened by the constant rain, making everything in the room somehow old and dusty.

Stiles remembers this room when he was a kid, it seemed so. Big. Imposing. A place where important people do important stuff.  He remembers this room as a teenager, a puzzle for him to solve. He remembers trying to pick the lock of the desk drawer where his dad kept the station keys and his more… mountain lion-y case files. Now, though. All he sees are the dust motes in the air, the blanket in the corner of the sofa from the many nights his dad spent at the station. Scuffing on the floor beneath the chair facing the desk. Boxes of solved cases files piled next to the overflowing shelves. A roll of police tape forgotten on a corner of the desk, obscuring part of a picture frame holding an ancient picture of him, smiling with all his teeth in the arms of his mom. The picture is browning in the corners. Stiles looks away.

He wishes he could dive within himself, find the 16-year-old in there who was passionate about solving mysteries. The one who could look at this room and see all sorts of clues. All that now-Stiles can see is how time makes everything dull, how much of his dad’s life is contained in this one room, how sad that is. John was never just the Sheriff to Stiles. He was never just the Sheriff to Scott, Melissa and Lydia either. But now that Stiles is in Boston, it seems he reverted to being the one thing that makes Stiles most afraid of losing him.

Stiles’ butt cheek buzzes as Sir Mix-A-Lot rings loud into the empty space. Stiles doesn’t let him elaborate on what his anaconda won’t do as he answers Andy’s call.

“Hey, sugar.”

The voice on the other side of the phone is grainy, fond, a tad annoyed, perfect. Reassuring like a worn, fluffy blanket.

“Hey Stiles. I thought we agreed on the nickname thing.”

Stiles blows a raspberry into the air. “Oh, _baby_. _You_ agreed. I zoned out. Besides, you know you’d miss them.”

Andy chuckles amiably, voice all rugged and sexy. Stiles feels for all these poor bastards he turns his killer smile on at book signings. They must probably buy fifty books in their lust-filled daze. Andy could single-handedly revive the written word industry with that smile.

“I might, yeah. I miss you, though.” Stiles smiles at that. _Yeah_ he does. “I couldn’t reach you yesterday. Everything ok?”

Stiles’ heart plummets all the way into the dark disgusting basement of the station. He’d forgotten, for a second. Where he was, what was happening. He’d _forgotten_. In the middle of the station, in his dad’s office. Fuck.

He rolls the chair around, wheels squeaking, plastic creaking, Stiles fidgeting. Stiles tries to find his voice, clears his throat a couple times.

“Aah, uuuuh, let’s circle back to me in a second, yeah?” he lets out in a strangled voice. “How are you, honeybunch? Where are you?”

Andy’s silence is thoughtful, verging on concerned over the phone, but he lets it go. “I’m fine. Not quite homesick yet.” A smile. “I’m in Bisbee”, he says with self-satisfied aplomb. What a man.

Stiles huffs and puffs. “Bisbee!” he exclaims. He throws a few more exclamation points in there to get his point across. “Who knew people in Arizona read?”

There’s shuffling on the other side of the line, whispers and doors banging. General interrupting noises that take ten years off Stiles’ life. He doesn’t like to be interrupted when he’s being petulant. Andy comes back.

“Well, they _do_ read. A lot. The library sold almost seventy percent of their first edition stock.” It’s said so matter-of-factly, so falsely humble. Stiles is proud of his man.

“Aw, honey, of course. Your book is great.”

Andy huffs, a bit of impatience shining through. “How would you know? You haven’t read it.”

“Yet”, Stiles amends. “I haven’t read it yet. I will, once you come back from your godawful, long-ass tour. You can massage my feet while I do.”

Bomb diffused. He hears Andy smirk.

“You can keep begging, _babe_ , but it will never happen.”

Stiles flashes back to their first date, one in the morning in an empty library, elbows bumping together as they both reached for the computer. These first nervous glances and his heart in his throat. He flashes back to last week, squabbling in the home improvement aisle at the store as they bought an electric sander for the kitchen cupboards.

He flashes back to doodling boredly on his notebook when the student next to him elbowed him and leaned over to whisper loudly: “Dude. Check out the TA. He’s _hot_.” Stiles lifted his gaze from his desk, made eye contact with Andy for the first time.

His heart does this uncomfortable squeezing thing that most people call love. He clears his throat again, realizing he’s been silent a tad too long.

“You know I will never stop trying.” He injects as much fake cheer as he’s capable of.

Andy’s thoughts are loud over the phone. “What’s up?”

“Nothing.”

Silence on the line. Feet pacing. Wheels squeaking.

Stiles sighs, long. His hand is tugging on his hair, his mouth is trying to chew on his sleeve. His limbs seem to realize on their own that both are impossible at the same time. Idiots. They settle on the chewing thing. Which makes it hard for Stiles to enunciate as he tells Andy: “m’dad dis’p’rd”.

Andy stops pacing. Stiles stops chewing. Squeak squeak squeak.

“My dad disappeared.” His heart is a cold, dead thing in his chest.

Andy’s breath has caught in his throat.

“What? Stiles—“, he starts with urgency. “How?” More pacing. “Do you want me to—“

No. Stiles doesn’t want him to. Or rather, yes, he desperately wants him to. He wants Andy to wrap himself around him and to protect him from everything and to look at him the way he does sometimes when Stiles quotes Allen Ginsberg and to magically conjure Stiles’ dad out of nowhere, safe, healthy, and vaguely disapproving.

But that’s impossible. And there’s no easy way to say “I don’t want you to see me at my most disastrous because I am afraid you might stop loving me. Also there’s a chance you might discover I’ve been hanging out with magic, mythical creatures most of my life, and get scared. Once I was even possessed by a Japanese demon. Lmfao.”

So Stiles sighs and rolls around and chews. And through all of that, he recounts for Andy the most minute, boring details of his dad’s disappearance. He doesn’t mention Lydia, because Andy and Lydia don’t get along. Whatever, he’s stopped forcing it. He doesn’t mention Derek, because there’s no reason to. He mentions punching Jordan, though. Andy chides him gently, but he’s not surprised. When Stiles is done, there’s a noticeable tear in the sleeve of his green and blue hoodie, and one of the chair’s wheels is blocked entirely.

Andy is silent for a while.

“I’ll come”, he says.

Stiles reasons with him. He likes these moments when he gets to be the reasonable one. They’re few and far between, and often involve Andy being protective and more caring of Stiles than Stiles is of himself.

“I’ll call…”, Andy starts. He gets stuck. Andy is a solution-oriented person, an authority figure, a dude who gets shit done. But he doesn’t know anyone in Northern California, and there’s no shit to get done. Stiles appreciates the sentiment, all the same.

Andy resigns himself to being useless and far away, just a caring voice on the phone. He tells Stiles it’s going to be ok, over and over and over again. He tells him to trust the police to do their job. He tells him they’re good men and women, that they were trained by his dad. He doesn’t tell him to let them do their job and not get involved because Andy doesn’t know the Stiles who pokes his nose into criminal cases and bad situations. Stiles nods and agrees and soothes his tired, worried boyfriend. He hangs up, longing, exhausted, alone.

He stares around the room with renewed despair. Then he sits up abruptly, ramrod straight. He rolls his sleeves up to his elbows. He has a plan, so simple and obvious he might cry. He opens his dad’s computer. Then, he hacks into the Beacon Hills Sheriff Station server.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Camp Nano is upon us and once again I'm trying to finish editing this monster (haha) of a fic.  
> Thank you for reading and thank you for still supporting Sterek. You guys are golden. 
> 
> !! NOTE : Stiles uses sarcastic humor / annoying people to death as a coping mechanism so as not to melt into a puddle of fear and anxiety abt his dad disappearing. He goes through violent mood swings because he's Stiles and also because Something is Going On. Sorry if that doesn't show through in my mediocre writing. Love u bye

A knock at the door. Urgent. Relentless. Annoyed. It’s probably been knocking a while. But Stiles can’t be blamed, he’s in the Zone. Andy knows better than to disturb him when he— oh. He’s not home. He’s at the station. His dad’s chair. His dad’s office. His dad’s missing. And someone’s knocking on the door.

Right.

“Yeah yeah, keep your pants on!” Stiles yells.

The door opens swiftly. Deputy Hale pokes his head in, fixes him with the Glare of Doom. “I’m gonna kill you. Dead. And I’m gonna enjoy it”, that glare says.

“Seriously, Stiles? Seriously?” Derek says, in the tone of the truly aggravated.

Stiles reclines on the creaky chair. He stretches his arms above his head slowly for effect. He tries to emulate the dignity of a cat that shat on a brand new carpet and has no fucks to give about it.

The Glare of Doom intensifies. Stiles smiles wide, with all his teeth.

Derek snaps. He strides all the way up to the desk, towers over Stiles menacingly. Runs out of steam. He can’t do anything and he knows it. He seems to debate the benefits of throwing Stiles’ lifeless body in a dumpster for a second, then sits down. He does it with familiarity and ease, like he’s probably done hundreds of times by now.

That sucks all of the fun out of the room. Stiles sits up, leans his elbows on the desk.

Derek and Stiles eye each other wearily. Neither seems inclined to break the silence that crowds the room, contributes to its eerie gloom.

Derek breaks eye contact first. He shifts, grabs the police tape lying next to the picture frame, starts unrolling and rolling it back nervously. He sighs, nostrils flaring. He fixes Stiles with the Look. The “you’re guilty and I know it” look his dad invented. Derek puts his own Hale twist to it, though, with the magnificent eyebrows. He makes it work.

“I didn’t let you in here for you to commit a felony and, and _prank_ the officers, Stiles”, Derek says.

Stiles valiantly tries to contain his self-satisfied smirk for a good second. Derek slams the roll of tape on the desk.

“Stiles!”

Stiles rolls his eyes the fun way, with his whole head. He shrugs, palms up.

“Alright man, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be a nuisance.” He chuckles. “Ok, that’s a lie.”

Derek seems mad beyond words. Stiles has trouble containing his joy.

“What? You don’t like it?” Stiles asks, all faux innocence.

Derek picks up the roll of tape again just to slam it back on the desk.

“Fine, fine! I’m sorry I hacked into the police system”, Stiles says in a monotone as Derek huffs. “And I’m sorry I pranked you a little bit. And Deputy Saldana.” Stiles sits up straighter. “But I’m not sorry about Parrish. He can kiss my ass.” He raises his eyebrows, waiting for Derek to fight him on that one.

Derek doesn’t fight him. He stares at him intently like he would a dangerous criminal.

 “What did you do? To Saldana and Parrish,” he asks.

Stiles can’t be blamed, really. Hacking into the police department files was just too easy. Seriously, he didn’t even have to bypass his dad’s password. It was the most ridiculous thing to guess. “Kanima.” Seriously. How obsessed can one person be? He was in in a matter of seconds. Then sweeping the network for relevant and/or suspicious files had been child play. Stiles had been frustrated and annoyed by the tiny loot he’d amassed, so he did what he did best: use technology to be annoying.

First he found pictures of Lydia on Parrish’s monitor, and that. That wouldn’t do. So he erased them. Then he erased all of his personal files, for good measure. And he replaced them with pictures of porcupines mating. Then he made it so his speakers would release a long, throaty moan every time he opened a web browser. But it didn’t feel like enough. He felt like using his super power for good, so he made it so hundreds of tiny roses would fill Deputy Saldana’s screen every time she hit the S key.

He felt awkward and vaguely nauseous because of the nice thing he did, so he hacked into Derek’s computer, found absolutely nothing personal or incriminating (boring), so he had a pair of bushy, dark eyebrows dangle on his monitor with a little speech bubble saying “Can eyebrows your computer?”. By then he felt like an accomplished troll and congratulated himself on a job well done.

He recounts his exploits to Derek, who does not seem impressed. What’s a guy to do around here to get some recognition? He gets a slightly different version of the Scowl of Death, which is closer to the Scowl of Disappointment and Slight Fear for Your Mental State. Stiles knows that one very well. He snatches the roll of tape and rolls it between his fingers.

“I’m sorry, alright?” he says. “It’s set to stop in, like, twenty minutes. Besides, I found some stuff.”

Derek leans forward.

“Couldn’t you have lead with that?” he asks. Stiles grimaces. Derek pretends he didn’t. “What did you find?”

“I don’t know yet”, Stiles answers. “I was starting to go through it when you came in. You shot my concentration to hell. Thanks, man.”

Derek keeps ignoring him. Stiles simmers. He wonders if he could have Derek’s computer self-destruct. That might be fun.

“Ok”, Derek says, all work and no fun. “We can divide it in two, go through it faster.”

“No, man”, Stiles says, shaking his head. “There’s… not a lot. I can go through it on my own. If I find something worth checking out, I’ll let you know. Probably.”

Derek gives him a probing look, but Stiles doesn’t budge. He’ll do this himself. Derek, recognizing a lost cause, sighs and gets up. Stiles winks and finger-guns at him until he’s out the door.

He starts with the staff files: looks over each of them, tries not to feel too sickened at the notes his dad left on all of them, in a shorthand barely anyone can decipher. Probably only him, Lydia, and a handful of deputies he trusts. Maybe Derek. He checks the new hires first: Riley a few months ago, then Derek and Jenna over a year ago. Most of the officers have been here for ages. They know his dad well, they trust him. It’s a close-knit, efficient team. His dad’s team.

Stiles switches over to emails, but can’t find anything out of the ordinary. Finally, he looks at the few files that caught his attention earlier. Under a few DWI reports, he finds stuff that was hidden purposefully. A few old cases with possible links to the supernatural, documentation related to the bestiary (werewolves, were-coyotes, kitsunes, banshees, hellhounds. And kanima. Of course.). An old case that’s been reopened. The Hale fire. Not only that, but all the police investigations reports relating to Kate Argent. Metadata show the last time the file’s been opened was… almost a year ago. This makes no sense.

Stiles can’t deal with this. He can’t deal with the fact of his dad’s accident, his mysterious disappearance and what all of these things most probably point to. He can’t. What he can deal with, are the meager, sad clues he’s gathered up to now. So he bundles them all up in his brain like the world sorriest loot, and takes them to the officers of the law waiting with bated breath behind his door. Stiles knows they’re probably not, like, waiting for him to solve this. They have jobs to do, matters to attend to. But whatever, this is Stiles’ mind, and he can do whatever he wants up there.

::

He slides into the chair in front of Derek’s desk. He tries to be as quiet and composed as he can, as un-Stiles-like as he can make himself. He’s probably not very successful. But he’s here to convince Derek to let him do this. And also to tell him that for some reason his dad, the disappeared Sheriff, Derek’s boss and possibly mentor, reopened the supernatural case of his whole family burning to death in a fire caused by Derek’s psycho ex-girlfriend. So, you know.

Derek’s on the phone, jotting down notes and making quiet comments. He pays no attention to Stiles. After a while, he hangs up the phone and stands up, looking right through Stiles. That’s fine, ok. Then Derek leaves. Stiles starts jiggling his leg up and down. He isn’t one for being ignored. He should be used to it by now, but no. No. Nope. He pops his lips on that mental “p”. Before he has time to work himself up into a legitimate anxious fury, Derek’s back at the desk, with two of the station’s trademark paper cups. He slides one over to Stiles wordlessly, sits down with his own. Ok then.

Stiles takes the cup, makes sure he catches Derek’s eye and gives him a nod. In… appreciation, or gratitude, or whatever. Whatever. Then, very slowly, as carefully as he can manage, he lays out what he found for Derek. There’s not much to lay out. It’s sad, really, that all he can say to the dude, cringing in his chair and holding on to his coffee cup is: “Can you think of any reason why my dad would reopen the Hale fire case?” and wait for Derek to blow up and start crying or possibly murder him.

Derek doesn’t do any of those things. He freezes. He blinks and slowly, ever so subtly, draws back into himself. One second he’s Deputy Hale of the legendary bushy eyebrows, the next he’s a blank slate. Stiles would feel for the guy if he wasn’t lost somewhere in his own tornado of fear and perplexity.

After a few seconds, Stiles leans over the desk. He knocks on the wood, next to where Derek’s hands are folded neatly.

“Hey, dude. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, really. I can… I can find out on my own. I can ask someone else. It’s ok, just… snap out of it?” He holds Derek’s gaze until he’s back, fully present in his own body. Derek nods at Stiles, swallows. His hands are white knuckled in front of him.

“It’s fine, you just… caught me by surprise.”

Stiles cocks his head to the side while Derek takes a sip of his coffee.

“You sure?” he asks.

Derek nods decisively. “Yes, I am. Tell me what you found.”

Stiles does. All the details Derek must know from reading the case files and actually living through it, and the additional files on the Argents Stiles found alongside it. With halted words, Stiles tells him about the traffic cam video he saw, his dad ramming into the other car deliberately. Derek takes his time to ponder it.

Derek makes eye contact with Stiles. There’s a scared teenager in there somewhere.  

“I have no idea what that means”, he says.

“Me neither”, Stiles’ own scared teenager answers Derek.

::

They take their questions to Parrish. Stiles was against it, Derek was for it, the legal course of investigation won.

Parrish listens to Derek’s complete but stilted report of everything, every tiny piece of clue they could piece together. It’s… not much. A traffic cam video. An old case reopened a year ago. No matter how ominous the case is, it doesn’t really point to anywhere. Argents have deserted Beacon Hills a long time ago. There hasn’t been a supernatural case that could be linked to them for years.

They’re left looking at each other, scratching their chins, no further than where they used to be. Stiles can’t stand it, the uncertainty, the anticipation of _something_ that never comes, all this empty space where plans of action and agency should be. He needs the police to do their job and find his dad. He can’t do it alone. He doesn’t want to do it alone.

Stiles starts pacing right there in the break room where Parrish and Derek are standing, Jenna leaned on the doorframe holding onto files.

“Ok, we’re nowhere. Right? Nothing makes sense. Right?” he stops and looks over at them. Both men nod at him stiffly. Jena gives him a sympathetic face.

“You haven’t found anything else?”, Stiles asks Parrish, on a last ditch effort. “The, the deputies, the patrols, anyone?”

Parrish takes a step back, shaking his head. “Let me think… nothing has come up, yet. No. I’m—“

Stiles interrupts him before he gets to say “I’m sorry”. When people are sorry, it means it’s over. This has just started. He faces them, feet planted wide.

“Ok then”, he nods, “we need to do something.”

He paces across the tiny room, from the coffee maker to the couch and back. Both Parrish and Derek shift slightly to widen his path. Panic’s rising in him, making it hard to concentrate on anything but the choking feeling in his throat.

“Any ideas?” he asks, a bit frantic.

The room is silent in response. Stiles can see they’re all clearly giving their best effort to find a path out of this mess. But they have given up before they started. Stiles doesn’t know how to give up.

He resumes his pacing. He wonders if his dad used to wear the same path into the cheap carpet, if this is somehow hereditary. He can’t let his mind wander, he needs to— He stops and spins around to face the others.

“I got it”, he says. “We need to talk to Melissa.” All three people present in the room give him blank looks. Stiles sighs.

“Melissa. _McCall_. She and my dad used to… date, right?”

Parrish nods. Derek seems more reluctant to confirm it. Jenna looks decidedly uncomfortable. She quietly excuses herself from the room, hefting the piles of documents in her arms as an excuse to be anywhere but here, right now. Stiles can’t blame her.

“We have nothing, so”, Stiles continues. “It can’t hurt to talk to her. She might have... more. Something. Anything. It can’t hurt.” Stiles doesn’t know who he’s trying to convince here, him or them. It doesn’t matter. “Frankly, Parrish, I can’t believe you didn’t-“

“Of course I did, Stiles”, Parrish defends. “Jenna and I talked to her yesterday morning.”

“Well?” Stiles asks, palms open expectantly. “What did you find out?”

Parrish rocks back on his heels and scratches at his jaw. He looks away.

“Nothing unusual”, he recounts. “They hadn’t been in contact for a few weeks. Mrs McCall couldn’t pinpoint anything out of the ordinary. She and your dad hadn’t talked in... a while.”

That’s not good news. Stiles shakes his head.

“Regardless, I want to talk to her. I found… I found the files in the system, I might find something else.”

“St—“, Parrish starts, once again the placating son if a bitch Stiles has vowed to beat the crap out of.

Stiles holds up both hands.

“Parrish, I swear to God”, he says. “Don’t make me break my hands on your face.”

Jordan deflates.

“Fine”, he says on a exhale. “No need to… Jesus.” He looks to Derek, who nods. “Fine. You’ll talk to Mrs McCall. I’ll come with you.”

Derek clears his throat loudly just as Stiles is opening his mouth to yell.

“Deputy Hale will come with you”, Parrish corrects quickly.

Stiles is affronted. And also a bit relieved. But mostly affronted.

“What? No.”

Jordan sighs like he’s negotiating bedtime with a toddler. Which, fair. “Yes, Stiles, he will.”

Stiles glares daggers at him. For the principle of the thing. “I don’t need a babysitter.”

Parrish starts rolling his eyes, catches himself halfway. “You _need_ an officer of the law to help you conduct a legal investigation, Stiles.”

“Listen, Jordan. You might be a great cop and everything, and Lydia obviously likes you, but you’re not Sheriff _yet_ ”, Stiles counters, biting. “So why not stick to what works, yeah?” He points to his chest. “I’ll do my thing, and you cops do your thing, and we both hope it will lead us to finding my dad, the Sheriff, your boss, alive and safe. Cool?” he asks, eyebrows raised. He doesn’t wait for an answer before concluding: “Cool.”

Parrish turns away from him. He starts a hushed conversation with Derek. While Stiles is _right fucking there_. The nerve. Stiles could easily listen in, but he doesn’t. Whether he gets his way or not, it doesn’t really matter. He’s not actually opposed to having a partner, not even Sourwolf Hale. It would even be nice not to do this alone. But there’s no way he will admit that out loud.

Stiles also knows he doesn’t matter if he gets his way or not. Whatever they say, he’ll do whatever the fuck he needs to find his dad. Even if they put him in a holding cell, he’ll break out. He already did it once. When he was fourteen, after that disastrous Jalapeño pepper incident. The one they don’t talk about, ever. He’d broke him and Scott out. Granted, he’s a lot less skinny these days. But he’ll do it anyway. He knows it, and they must know it, because they turn around to face him with matching gruff expressions.

“Stiles”, Parrish says. Then he stops talking, because he knows what’s good for him.

“I’ll come with you”, Derek continues, arms crossed, nostrils flaring, looking like a pissed of Greek God. Or, you know, just a normal, good-looking man. Person. Whatever.

“You are – unofficially”, Derek adds with a look at Parrish, “hired on this case by the department. You need a partner. Everyone does.”

His dad used to say that to hot shot new deputies who thought they were too good for patrols buddies. Damn Derek Hale.

“Fine”, Stiles grumbles.

Parrish gives both of them an assessing look, nods to himself, and leaves the room.

Stiles closes his eyes, takes a few seconds to regroup. He feels Derek fidgeting at the edge of his consciousness, but he can’t take notice right now. He breathes. He doesn’t want to do this. He hasn’t worn this particular coat in a while, he shucked it off with pleasure almost a decade ago. He doesn’t want to hunt for clues and look for the unknown. He doesn’t want to hold the fate of his dad in his hands. He doesn’t, he can’t. He breathes. Stiles opens his eyes.

“Ok, let’s go”. He strides to the door, wondering where the hell he left his jacket.

Derek is on his heels, perplexed. “Go where?”

Stiles whirls on him, aggravated. “Weren’t you listening to all of –“ flailing toward the break room “– that? Let’s go see Melissa.”

Derek gives him an incredulous look. Like he hasn’t been first witness to Stiles losing it since day one. His hands are in his uniform’s pockets and he looks entirely too planted in place. Stiles needs him to be moving, restless, a direct echo of his scattered thoughts.

“Stiles”, Derek says slowly, as if he’s speaking to a child, “it’s 10:30pm.”

Stiles eyeballs him, feet edging toward the door. “So what?”

“So, it’s late. We’ll go tomorrow morning.” He cuts Stiles off before he can work himself up into another frenzy. “First thing.”

Stiles knocks on the doorframe, just for something to do with his hands that is not punching officers of the law.

“Derek”, he says, “we can’t lose another day. You know the bullshit: the first twenty four hours are critical in a- in a case like this.” There. That is reasonable. Not desperate and crazy. Good job Stiles.

Derek just looks at him critically, assessing the looks of him. Stiles gets self-conscious in a heartbeat. He knows his jeans have holes and stains, and not the fashionable kind. His t-shirt has seen better decades. His hair is standing up at weird angles on his head. He knows he hasn’t shaved in a while and his morning shower is but a long forgotten memory. He’s a mess, though he prefers to think of it as “hobo chic”. Anyway, this is not a battle his general appearance will win for him.

“We’ve… I’ve lost so much time already, I-“, he pleads, wringing his hands.

Derek frowns a unibrow, takes a step toward him.

“Stiles”, he starts, serious and authoritative. A cop. “All of the station, all of us… we haven’t stopped looking. The night crew will keep looking. While you _rest_.”

Stiles relents. Sudenly, he’s _exhausted_. “Fine.”

Derek gives him a barely-there smirk. He gestures to the door. “Go home.”

Stiles shakes his head. “No.”

Derek’s right eye twitches impatiently. “No?” he asks Stiles.

“I’m not staying in my father’s house”, Stiles explains around the fabric of his sleeve between his teeth. “It gives me the creeps.”

The eye twitch intensifies. “Where will you sleep then?” Derek asks again.

Stiles surveys his surroundings, takes in the deserted desks, the few officers moving around the station in a sedate pace, the darkness through the windows. Fuck, it _is_ late.

“I’ll... stay here”, he decides.

“Stiles, I’m not sure—“, Derek fights him on it, for arguments sake.

“It’s fine, Derek. I’ll sleep on the couch in my dad’s office”, Stiles says dismissively. He peers at the room through the open door. “That way I’ll be around first thing in the morning to get to Melissa’s”, he adds, looking at Derek defiantly.

Derek pinches the bridge of his nose. “I suppose there’s no way we can convince you not to.”

Stiles smiles wide, rocking back on his heels. “Nope”, he says, popping the p.

Derek sighs. He walks to his desk, snatches his coat off the back of his chair. With heavy feet, he makes his way to the door. He throws Stiles a last, worried, exhausted look over his shoulder.

“Good night, Stiles.”

Stiles nods, looks at him until he’s out the door, inside his car. Until he drives off.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was fun :)

Stiles gets up in a symphony of popping joints and squeaking muscles. He scratches at the few hairs that made it to his chin. He should have probably gone home. He could shave. Change. Eat a real breakfast. He yawns theatrically, arms stretched over his head. His back arches and he can feel every minute aches caused by too many nights spent on lumpy sofas.

He locates his shoes, puts them on as he opens the door to the Sheriff’s office. He startles Derek and Jenna on the other side of it. Both of them look up at him, caught out. Clearly they were having some sort of private conversation, probably a disagreement, or a quarrel, or a passionate kiss. Whatever. Stiles’ brain is not fully online yet. Even if it was, he doesn’t care. He shrugs his shoulders, side-steps them to get to the coffee machine. He has too much on his plate to worry about other people’s personal life. Definitely.

::

They take Derek’s squad car. Stiles wants to get to Melissa’s as soon as possible, but Derek drives him to the Sheriff’s house, ignoring his protests. He stops in front of it and stays immobile and stone-faced until Stiles stomps into the house and returns, sulking, in clean(-ish) clothes and freshly shaved, a backpack with a few essentials hanging on his shoulder. Stiles gets into the car, slams the door. He tries to throw Derek a Scowl of Death. Derek takes his time smiling at him with all his teeth. Asshole.

Derek drives them to Melissa’s efficiently, police scanner buzzing in the background. The sky is clear through the window, making everything light and easy. Stiles is not light and easy. But Derek doesn’t seem to mind, tapping a strangely familiar rhythm on the steering wheel. If it’s another High School Musical song, Stiles is going to scream. He feels too big for the car, he needs to do something, right now, anything that is not just sitting, and thinking, and breathing. So he speaks.

“So, Derek.”

Derek raises his eyebrows but keeps his eyes on the road.

“You and Deputy Jenna seem pretty chummy”, Stiles says, stroking his imaginary beard. “Anything you want to share with the class?”

Derek’s eyebrows scoff with his mouth. He mulls over his answer.

“One: no. Two: what’s it to you?” Derek answers, eyes still on the road. There’s no animosity in his voice. He seems genuinely curious why Stiles would care.

Stiles doesn’t care. Stiles just needs a distraction. Stiles is tired of referring to himself in the third person.

“Come on, man”, he says. “I’m just curious, is all. We’ve been spending a lot of time together over the past- what is it?” Stiles pulls at his hair a little bit, to get the brain juices flowing. “Three days? Four? God, I hate this town.” He snaps out of it. What good does it do mulling it over? They’re here. He’s queer. This is happening whether he wants it or not. “Anyway man”, he changes course, “I don’t know you.”

Derek scoffs with his whole upper body this time. “You know me.”

Stiles wonders if running next to the car wouldn’t be a better way to dispel his nervous energy than having this conversation, but he’s invested now. He dug this hole, he needs to make it into a tunnel or suffocate in it. Whichever comes first. His hands gesture violently in front of him to make his point.

“I know the old you”, he argues. “Derek Hale, man-pain made werewolf, broody creeper, poor conversationalist. Seducer of evil women. Asshole Sourwolf. I know that guy.”

Derek scowls or glares or scoffs disdainfully, possibly a mixture of all of the above. Stiles ignores it.

“I don’t know… you know, this guy.” Stiles finger-guns at Derek. “Deputy Hale, with the beard and the...” He gestures vaguely at Derek’s whole body like what he’s saying makes sense. Derek’s eyebrows don’t seem to be fooled.

“I don’t know that guy. Like at all. I’ve seen you in action and in the car and in the uniform” - Stiles swallows - “but I don’t know you. I kinda want to know who’s the guy my- my dad” – his throat is so dry – “trusted. Trusts.” Stiles looks out the window.

Derek pulls over on the curb in front of the McCall house. It looks exactly like Stiles remembers, if a little shabbier. Like his dad's house. The potted plants on the windowsills are different. Violet and blue. Derek stays silent a long time. He makes no move to get out of the car. Stiles sniffs, wipes his face on the sleeve of his gray hoodie. It’s his favorite one, he was determined not to cover it with snot. Oh well.

Derek opens the dashboard compartment and pulls out a box of tissues. Stiles accepts one wordlessly, looking out the window. He’s such a fucking mess. Anything sets him off. That’s not right. That’s not okay. How can he hope to find his dad if he can’t keep it together longer than two minutes? He wipes his face, blows his nose as loud and obnoxious as he can. Then he turns and looks at Derek, head on, like you look at a red traffic light, waiting for it to turn green.

Derek doesn’t turn green. He flexes his hands and taps on the steering wheel and fiddles with the controls on the scanner. He looks at Stiles. That’s the man who looked at him a couple days ago from the other side of his desk. That’s Derek Hale: unfiltered. Stiles is struck with anticipation. Derek opens his mouth, hesitates, words on the verge of his lips.

“I don’t know you, either”, Derek says. “Aside from the annoying, spastic kid and Scott’s best friend and the Sheriff’s son, I don’t know who you are. Trust goes both ways.”

That is such a Derek Hale answer, not willing to give up an inch until someone else does, that Stiles is divided between rolling his eyes as empathically as he can and punching him in the face. But his knuckles remember meeting Parrish’s supernaturally-hard jaw, vividly, and Stiles is certain he would break his hand on Derek Hale’s chiseled-in-stone cheekbones. So he goes with rolling his eyes with his whole body. Which, clearly, doesn’t impress Derek. To prove it, he raises his eyebrows in the “Unimpressed #4” formation.

Come to think of it, Derek’s not exactly wrong in this assessment. Stiles keeps harrowing him with questions, but rarely offers up anything about himself. He just doesn’t really see why Derek would care. Probably, Derek thought the same.

Stiles checks his non-existent watch. Then he checks his phone. They’re early. Melissa’s expecting them in about thirty minutes. He makes his proposal.

“You drive to the coffee place on Main, I’ll talk. Deal?” he asks with an eyebrow-raise so nonchalant and disdainful, Lydia Martin would be proud.

Derek just turns on the ignition, and pulls off the curb. Stiles talks.

::

Stiles is adding a second sugar packet to his four-shots flat white as he finishes telling Derek about his life in Boston, in the broadest, least emotional way he could manage. He glossed over the whole unsavory gay freak out bit. Derek doesn’t need to know about that. And the depression, and the PTSD. Every mention of his dad was written off the script. Basically, he told Derek about his job, his house, and his friends. The safe, unemotional bits. So of course Derek digs his heels in and brings up the awkward stuff.

“So… you live with someone?” Derek asks his coffee cup as he unlocks the car. Stiles sighs, aggravated. Derek gets in and sips at the black monstrosity he calls coffee.

“Yeah dude. His name’s Andy”, he tells his cuticles. “We’ve been together about six years.” Here. No need to go into what together entails for him and Andy, those first few years. One Pandora box open at a time, thank you very much. Stiles huffs and shrugs and speaks to his cuticles some more. “Anyway, I’m pretty sure my dad told you all of that, no?”

Stiles isn’t sure about a lot of stuff about his dad anymore, but one thing he knows, is his dad looooves to talk slash complain about Stiles to his deputies. Even brag about him, sometimes. Like when he graduated, or when he sold his first app. Stiles knows, because he’ll get random Facebook messages of deputies he’s known all his life congratulating him or inquiring about him every few weeks, generally right after his dad and he talked on the phone. So yeah. Derek probably knows everything Stiles just rattled off already. Unsurprisingly, Stiles sees Derek nod out of the corner of his eye.

“Then what the hell, man?” Stiles asks acidly. “Why’d you make me tell you if you already know?”

Derek looks at him. “I prefer to get information first hand, from my friends.”

Well. There’s nothing Stiles can say to that. The word “friend” tastes weird in his mouth, associated with Derek Hale, but he knows, objectively, that’s where they’re headed. He’s spent more time with the guy these handful of days than with anyone else. Derek’s been there for him, in his weird, asshole-ish way, through this apocalypse of a situation. He trusts him, intrinsically. He would rather die than tell Derek, but he values his opinion. Fuck, they’re  _ friends _ .

Stiles opens his mouth to say something shitty that would diffuse the situation, but Derek goes on.

“I guess I should extend you the same courtesy, then.” He parks the car in front of Melissa’s house, turns toward Stiles. His eyes are a bit unfocused, faraway. “I left Beacon Hills because… well, probably for the same reasons  _ you _ did.”

Stiles looks back at him.

“Hellhole”, Derek mouths. They both nod at each other. Fuck, they  _ are _ friends.

“I followed Braeden in search of the Desert Wolf for a while, but that didn’t pan out…”, he trails off.

Stiles tries to contain his wince. He doesn’t need reminding of Malia’s evil bitch-mom. He has the scars to remember her by.

“She wanted to come back, I didn’t”, Derek continues. “So I stayed in Seattle for a while. There’s a pack there my mom knew. But it wasn’t…”

He trails off again. Stiles doesn’t remember hearing Derek talk about himself, voluntarily, ever. Words seem to come with difficulty, like he has to dig very deep inside himself to unearth them. Derek probably doesn’t have a lot of friends he can talk to. Stiles considers how lonely it must be to not have a Lydia. Or a Scott. Or a dad.

“I found Cora”, Derek says. “I wanted to see something different, and she was getting restless, so we— we traveled. All over. Australia, Philippines, Cambodia, Bali… we moved around all the time. Cora took a lot of pictures. We stayed in Mongolia for a while.” He taps on the steering wheel, looking out at the road, voice wistful. “Then we went to Europe. Scotland was great. We thought we might stay there a while, but Cora got a message from the pack she stayed with in Colombia. Their Alpha was dying. So she’s Alpha, now.”

Stiles’ eyes widen dramatically. Cora is what now? “She’s a what now? How?”

Derek smiles a tiny, proud smile, drinks the last dregs of his coffee.

“We don’t really know”, he says, voice all warmth and no bite. “The Alpha was an old woman. She raised Cora after the- the fire. Most the betas were around her age, or preteens. Nobody acted really surprised when Cora’s eyes bled red. I stayed with her for a while, after. She’s doing well.”

Stiles has to ask. “Why didn’t you just stay with her? Integrate her pack?”

Derek smiles at him. It’s a sad one.

“My alpha was Laura”, he says. “It can’t- it won’t be anyone else.”

Stiles fidgets with his coffee cup.

“And I don’t really like the hot weather”, Derek adds, thoughtful. “Too warm for leather jackets.”

Stiles chuckles. Derek Hale attempted a joke. And it was a really, really lame one. Fuck, they  _ really _ are friends.

“I went back to New York”, Derek goes on. “Laura’s and my apartment was still right where I’d left it, so. I sold all of our shit.” Derek looks down at his lap, swallows.

Stiles picks up the conversation. “That’s when you became a cop?”

Derek lifts his head to look at him, nods once. A bit of tension bleeds out of his shoulders. Like he was afraid Stiles was going to make him talk about  _ feelings _ , or something. Idiot.

“Yeah”, he says, voice a little deeper than it was a minute ago. “I couldn’t sleep. I went out to get pizza, and I stopped a mugging. Kind of by accident.” He laughs. A real laugh, booming and full of humor, over as suddenly as it started. “It was so  _ easy _ . I just had to scare them off and hit one of them a little bit. It reminded me of- of suicides at basketball practice. How all the guys were out of breath and I had to restrain myself from running yards ahead. Easy.”

He turns a delighted, nostalgic smile on Stiles. Stiles kind of want to protest on behalf of all the guys who _did_ want to puke their guts at the  end of suicides, but he’s afraid it might ruin… whatever this is, where they _share_ stuff. A share circle? Honesty hour? Friendship?

“So I applied to the academy, got in, did the training, and I didn’t think of anything else for a while. Then I joined a precinct, in Brooklyn. Turns out I wasn’t the only shifter in the force”, he says with a smirk that is not destined for Stiles.

The radio static fills the car for a second, then vanishes. Derek comes back to the moment. 

“I was a beat cop there for about two years. It was great, the team, the job….” Derek takes a sip of his coffee, frowns at it when he finds it empty. “But the city… I’ve seen enough. I don’t, I wanted— I wanted something simpler. Less crowded.” He clears his throat. “So I called Scott. He told me Beacon Hills had- died down. So I transferred here. In the middle of my detective training”, he chuckles.

Derek looks at Stiles, looks and looks until Stiles looks back. “Your dad was great. He welcomed me into the force, helped me find a place, forced– encouraged me to meet Scott’s pack.” Derek amends: “your pack”. Stiles looks out the window. Derek taps the same syncopated rhythm on the wheel of the car. 

His voice changes in pitch. He’s back to being Deputy Hale. “That’s when I met Jenna. We started out together here. She came from Chicago, I came from New York. We had a lot in common. We bonded. That’s it. It was never…” 

Stiles crumples his empty paper cup in his hand. He doesn’t need to know. He doesn’t want to know.

Derek sighs, starts opening the door. Stiles’ hand shoots out of his own accord, grabs Derek’s shoulder. Derek looks at Stiles’ hand, bewildered. Stiles does the same. He doesn’t release his hold. 

“Thank you”, Stiles says, throat working overtime. “For telling me.” 

He looks out the window of the car so he doesn’t have to see Derek’s bunny teeth smile at him. He takes a peak anyway. Aw crap. Derek’s unleashed a full on shit-eating grin at him.

“That’s what friends are for.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM DONE AGONIZING OVER MAKING THIS PERFECT  
> here have this quite acceptable chapter.  
> love u guys, I live for your comments.

Melissa breaks two of Stiles’ ribs as she crushes him to her in a fierce hug. Stiles bears it like a man.

Derek’s standing stiff next to their embrace, awkward in front of this display of motherly affection. Melissa finally lets Stiles go, but she keeps a hand on him, in his hair, trailing down his sleeve to squeeze his hand, like she’s afraid he might disappear as well.

Stiles was fully prepared to bring his special brand of acerbic honesty and aggression to this meeting, hurt that Mel and his dad never mentioned to him something he’d schemed (schemed!) with Scott for years to see happen. But faced with Mel’s gruff affection and her obvious dismay, he can’t help but melt a little. They accept coffee. Soon all three of them are sitting at the kitchen table, a mug in hand.

Derek, casting a puzzled glance at a mellowed out Stiles, clears his throat and starts asking questions. Right. This isn’t a courtesy visit. Stiles sits up in his chair, eyes on his mug.

He recognizes the gentle, quiet tone Derek uses to ask his questions. There’s the same precision to them, like he’s trying to get all the details while getting to the point as fast as possible, trying not to cause any unnecessary pain. Stiles is sitting in the McCall kitchen, and in front of a deputy’s desk in the station, and in the passenger seat of a squad car, hearing Derek Hale’s careful voice. He forces himself to come back to the moment, to Melissa’s answers.

As Parrish warned, there’s very little information to be found here. On the surface. Melissa and John had dinner every week up until a few months ago when her shift changes made it difficult. The Sheriff never talked about his cases with her. She didn’t have time to come see him at the hospital before… she breaks off, looks away from them. Stiles’ hand find hers under the table as she takes a sip of coffee, squeezes.

No, she didn’t notice anything unusual. No, he didn’t share his concerns about any potential threat. Stiles is this close to hitting his head on the table repeatedly.

“How long have you and the Sheriff been seeing each other?”, Derek asks, some steel seeping in his tone.

Stiles looks at him, surprised. Mel shifts her eyes. They’ve skirted the subject up to this point, and it’s clear she didn’t expect to be put on the spot. But she’s Melissa McCall, so she squares her shoulders and looks right at Derek. 

“Is that relevant to the case, Deputy?”

Derek doesn’t let himself be intimidated.

“Might be”, he answers serenely, bringing his mug to his lips.

Melissa deflates. “We weren’t”, she says.

Derek sets his mug on the table. He and Stiles share a look.

“What. I mean… what? I thought--”, Stiles blurts out, without giving Derek the time to ponder a precise and considerate answer.

Melissa pets his hand, looking fond and tired, slouched in her chair. 

“Your dad and I weren’t dating.” She squeezes Stiles’ hand. Her tone softens. “We wouldn't have kept it from you if we were.”

Stiles swallows scalding hot coffee so he has an excuse for the rawness of his throat.

“At some point I thought maybe…”, Melissa goes on unprompted, “but John started getting more distant, closed off. I took the hint.” She shrugs self-consciously.

Stiles fidgets. He doesn’t like the image of his dad wanting less of Melissa McCall in his life. Melissa is warm and smart and badass and strong-willed. All qualities that Stilinski men affectionate. It just seems… wrong. He brings his hoodie sleeve up to his mouth but it gets smacked away before he can start nibbling at it. He allows himself the luxury of a giant, teenage eye roll. Melissa smirks tightly at him.

Derek interrupts the quiet moment of complicity because he’s a good cop, and a no-good fun-sucker.

“Did something prompt his… change of heart?” he asks Melissa.

Melissa takes the time to think it over.

“I’m not sure”, she says. “A while ago, though, maybe a year, a year and a half, something happened with a case at work. He wouldn’t tell me what it was, but he looked preoccupied, moody. Almost obsessive”, she adds with a furtive glance at Stiles. Fair. If anyone deserves to be associated with the word obsessive, it’s him.

Melissa seems like she wants to say something else, but she’s obviously struggling with it.

“Tell us. Please”, Stiles just asks.

“After that case, he- changed”, Melissa says hesitantly. “He became more withdrawn, secretive. More- scattered. He wasn’t really the man I-”, she stops, looking apologetic. 

“I thought maybe he was- with the alcohol again.” She squeezes Stiles hand again, stricken. “After Rafa, I couldn’t. Not a second time. I’m sorry Stiles.”

Stiles shakes his head quickly. Melissa has nothing to be sorry for. Nothing, he repeats to himself as the blood rushes through his ears and his vision goes spotty. It’s not Mel’s fault. It’s not anybody’s fault. It’s his fault. He should have, he should have, he should- sharp pain flares across his right kneecap. Ow. He looks up at Derek. 

“Breathes”, Derek tells him slowly, holding his gaze.

Stiles inhales. The burning in his lungs tells him he hasn’t done that in a while. Uh. Derek must have kicked his knee to bring him back from the early stages of a panic attack.

“Stiles, I-”, Melissa starts, looking worried.

“No, Mel, don’t.” He clears his throat, but his voice still comes out raw and shaky. “It’s not your fault.”

Melissa studies him, lips pursed. She nods slowly.

“It’s not your fault, either”, she adds. 

A brand new flare of panic pierces through Stiles. He feels the pain radiate in his right knee. He breathes. 

“What happened then?” Stiles asks, in the most neutral tone he can manage.

Melissa shrugs, small. “Nothing, really. We stayed friends. We tried to keep the tradition of weekly dinners, but your dad’s head was elsewhere most of the time, and I had to change my shifts at the hospital, so… it’d been a few weeks since I saw him when the accident happened.”

Stiles wonders if Parrish hasn’t mentioned all of this to him because Mel hadn’t told him or because he was looking to spare Stiles or protect his dad’s reputation. Probably the latter.

The three of them stare at their respective coffee while pondering Melissa’s last words.

“Do you have any idea why he would reopen the Hale fire case?” Derek asks, breaking the reflective silence.

Right. Of course Derek would push for answers on this. If Stiles were him, he’d have broken the table in two by now, probably. He throws a quick glance at him, finds Derek studiously avoiding his gaze, focused with an entirely professional intensity on Melissa. Melissa looks taken aback by the question, which does not bode well. She shakes her head.

“I’m sorry, Derek. I have no idea why--” she stops in her tracks, cocks her head to the side. “Wait. The Hale fire is linked to the Argents, right?” 

Stiles blinks at her. He keeps forgetting that not everyone is in on the sordid details of how Derek’s whole family got burned alive by a psychotic bitch and mindless hunters. Derek’s jaw twitches, but he simply nods his head.

“Then maybe it’s got to do with Gerard Argent?” Melissa asks, pensive. “It’s not recent, though. A year and a half, maybe two years ago, he came back. He was just... hanging around Beacon Hills, alone.” Melissa fiddles with her coffee mug. “He even parked in front of the house once. I immediately called your dad. But Gerard didn’t try anything. Then he disappeared again. I figured Scott took care of it.” She shrugs.

Derek looks a bit shell shocked by this brand new information that nobody mentioned ever. As is Stiles. Why did nobody mention this ever? He’s already got his phone out, scrolling through his contacts to find Scott’s number. He’s definitely renaming him Dipshit in his contact list. Oh yeah. That’s happening. Melissa’s hand shoots out to touch his wrist.

“Don’t bother, Stiles. Scott’s in Cuba for a long weekend getaway with that pharmaceutical rep he’s been seeing. Sandra? Sonya?” She gives Stiles a tired look. “I can’t keep up.”

That, too, is brand new information. Scott has been seeing someone, and he’s serious enough to go on vacation with them? What the fuck is it with the people of Beacon Hills and keeping stuff from him? Is there something in the water? Stiles goes through the emotions he’s come to associate with Scott these past few years in quick succession: surprise, hurt, bitterness, abandonment. He shakes it off like a pro.

“Did you see any… other Argents in town in that time frame?” Derek asks, voice almost 100% back to neutral cop level.

“No, that’s it.” Melissa shakes her head. “And, it was years ago, Derek”, she adds in a gentler tone. “Or I would have mentioned it to Jordan when he came over, you know that.” Both men nod. They know that.

Still reeling from Melissa’s revelations, Stiles and Derek take their leave after a second mug of coffee and a promise to call if she thinks of literally  _ anything _ else, yes, Stiles, I promise. They sit in the car, still parked in the driveway, digesting everything. The Sheriff and Melissa’s almost-but-not-quite relationship. His obsession over a case. His weird behavior. Gerard Argent.

Stiles sees a puzzle coming together. He can’t see what the big picture is yet, or how some of the pieces fit, but he can see what his investigation board would look like if he was still seventeen and this was any other supernatural case. He hates that he can still feel the coarse red string on his fingers. The sound of scissors cutting through newspaper articles. The alcohol smell of a marker pen. He hates that in the midst of his turmoil of anxiety and self-loathing, he slipped back into his old self. The only difference is, his werewolf sidekick’s eyebrows are much hairier this time around.

The werewolf sidekick turns the ignition and pulls out of the driveway, driving them back to the station, still absorbed in his own thoughts.

“So”, Stiles says. He’s transported back to their first conversation in this car.

“So”, Derek answers, eyes on the road. His brow is pinched, his mouth bitter. Stiles infers he came to the same conclusion he did.

He says it out loud, though, because he needs to. “We should find Chris Argent.”

Derek nods somberly.

::

Derek pulls into the parking lot of a diner. He gets out of the car and eyebrows at Stiles until Stiles follows him. They end up in a booth at the back, Derek scanning the menu intently. Stiles is puzzled. Bewildered. Out of his depth. Derek orders two bacon cheeseburgers and two strawberry milkshakes (milkshakes!) and doesn’t react to Stiles’ increasingly aggressive wide-eyed stare. Only when Stiles starts flailing does Derek snap.

“What.”

Stiles keeps flailing. “Chris Argent? Shouldn’t we- look for him? Like, right the fuck now?”

Derek pinches his eyebrows at him. “First, we eat”, he says, stern. “Then I call Chris.”

Stiles almost jumps on the table. “YOU”, he starts yelling, but adjusts the volume at Derek’s “you shush” face. “You have Chris Argent’s  _ number _ ?” he whispers violently, his upper torso slumped on the table.

Derek looks annoyed and resigned. Stiles gets that a lot. 

“Yes, I have Chris’ number.” Like that’s enough information. Stiles gestures in his face until he goes on. 

“He acts as a- consultant. Sometimes. In the more- sensitive cases.”

Stiles eyeballs Derek as their burgers are slid between them. Derek takes a satisfied sip of his milkshake. Milkshake! 

“I thought they had you for that”, Stiles says. “At the station.”

Derek finishes chewing his bite of burger. “I don’t know everything”, he admits with a hint of an eye roll. “Even with the bestiary, and the stuff we recovered from the house, sometimes we just need more information.” He ponders his next sentence for a while, still holding on to his burger. “Chris has been a good ally. Even before I left Beacon Hills. He hasn’t given me a reason to doubt him.”

That’s saying something. If Derek Hale trusts an Argent, he’s probably as trustworthy as they come. Stiles thoughts are interrupted by Derek’s frown. Stiles looks up at him.

“What?”

“Eat your food”, Derek says over his very loud frown.

Stiles picks up a fry and nibbles at it, just so the frown shuts the fuck up. Derek doesn’t seem satisfied though. 

“Drink your milkshake.”

Stiles fights the straw of his drink for dominance without looking at it, defeats it, and takes a cautious sip. Ugh. He makes a face at Derek.  _ Strawberry _ , seriously?

Derek, satisfied, takes another bite of his burger. Stiles puzzles over what Chris Argent might have been up to this past decade. When he looks down, his burger has been destroyed by a ravenous beast. There’s ketchup dripping down his chin and Derek is giving him a disgusted look. Mmh. He might be the ravenous beast.

::

Derek makes Stiles stay inside the diner while he goes outside to call Chris. Stiles claws at the glass and eyeballs Derek for the duration of the phone call. Derek isn’t phased, leaning on the hood of his car, ankles crossed, a hand in his pants’ pocket. He looks entirely un-Derek-like: casual, unbothered, talking on the phone to the brother of the woman who ruined his life.

The phone call doesn’t last long. Once Derek’s hung up, he looks at Stiles through the window, motions for him to get in the car. Stiles practically jumps over the booth in his haste to learn what the fuck is going on.

Derek drives them back to the station as he relays his phone call to Stiles, in his usual succinct, thorough way. It makes Stiles appreciate him as a cop and despair for him as a human being. 

“Chris hasn’t seen Gerard in more than a year. They don’t really- keep in touch”, Derek says as he makes a left turn. “He said he’d check Gerard’s usual hides, put a word out through the hunter grapevine.” Stiles appreciates the sarcastic quotation marks in Derek’s tone. Derek sighs. “Apparently, Gerard’s become kind of a persona non gratta in the hunter community. Only the more… extreme ones are willing to deal with him.”

Stiles huffs, leans back on the headrest. “Probably doesn’t help that the dude is a hundred years old by now.” He looks out the window, his cheekbone tingling unpleasantly, then looks back at Derek. “Seriously, though. How is he not dead yet?”

Derek glances at him, offers a conspiratorial half smirk. It’s quickly wiped off as they enter the station’s parking lot. 

“Chris says most hunters will be happy to provide him with information about Gerard’s whereabouts, if they know anything. It shouldn’t take long to locate him.” He throws the car in park, gets out and starts making his way to the station.

Stiles mulls over his last words. He checks his wrist, rolls his eyes at himself and checks his phone. It’s early still. He gets out of the car, follows Derek. 

“Okay, so what do we do?” Stiles asks.

Derek stops, turns back toward him, eyebrows raised.

Stiles stops a few feet from him, stares.

Derek stares back.

_ Jesus _ , they’re going to be here all night. He gestures at Derek, waggles his eyebrows, in a “go on, git” motion that really means “answer my question right fucking now”.

“What do you mean”, Derek asks with the least inflection possible. Stiles might poison him in his sleep.

“I  _ mean _ , what do we do in the meantime?”, Stiles all but yells. “It’s early, we could, like, talk to some more people.”

Derek shuffles his feet, gives him a “dear lord why me” look. 

“ _ I _ am going to type a report on Melissa’s statement and our subsequent conclusions”, Derek answers. “As is my job, as an officer of the law.  _ You _ … should get some sleep.”

Stiles is so impressed with his level of contempt, he almost forgets to be mad. Almost. 

“Get some sleep? Are you serious?  _ Sleep _ ? Now? Derek? Are you fucking serious?”

Derek rolls his eyes. He knew Stiles would react this way. His entire posture screams “yeah alright”. He opens his mouth to placate him and Stiles gets Jordan Parrish flashbacks. He might have PTSD.

Stiles stomps ahead of him into the station, throws a “fine!” wrapped in barbed-wire over his shoulder. He ignores everyone inside the station, almost runs over poor Deputy Jenna hovering close to the coffee machine, and locks himself in his dad’s office.

He falls into his dad’s desk chair, opens the computer.  _ Sleep _ . Derek Hale is a total moron and Stiles will show him. He’s going to find Gerard Argent in less than an hour and without the help of crazy fanatic hunters, with the power of his mind, his mad computer skills and his desperation. Stiles will show them all. He’ll find his dad and bring him home and make Derek Hale eat his shorts. Ah.  _ Sleep _ . Ludicrous.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> introducing Chris Argent
> 
> also this story keeps being more confusing and weird, you're welcome.
> 
> THANK U GUYS for kudosing and commenting <3

Quiet taps on the glass door make Stiles jump three feet into the air, startling him out of- okay, he might have fallen asleep at his dad’s desk, in the middle of coding. Whatever. Coding is hard work, that doesn’t mean Derek was right. Fuck that.

He manages to bat away at a few post-its stuck to his face as he croaks out a perfectly appropriate greeting. 

“Gnnnrhghrr.”

Derek, framed in the open doorway, raises one slow, silent eyebrow. He’s such an asshole. As soon as Stiles finds his motor functions, he will tell him. 

They end up standing silently in front of the gurgling coffee machine, like two sleep-deprived, desperate idiots.

It’s 3am. The station is quiet, a few night shift officers milling around at sloth-speed. Chris had just called. Derek decided not to wait till morning. Nevermind that he didn’t go home, just napped on the break room couch for a few hours. Stiles wonders if maybe he’s running him ragged too, just for the added comfort of not being alone on the edge. Stiles has gotten three words out of Derek since he woke him up. “Chris called”. Then, in a the same sleep rough voice, a hopeful tone to it: “Coffee?”

The machine gurgles at them, cheap and overworked. It spurts something close to drinkable at irregular intervals. Hot, at least. Caffeinated. Stiles rubs at his face with both hands, trying to dispel the sleepy edges of his consciousness. It irks him, how familiar this is. Waking up at the station, getting coffee with Derek, anxiously awaiting the next clue that will help him find his dad. 

He feels like this is the new normal, this is his life now. The giant gaping hole where his heart used to be is all he can expect to have. He knows, somewhere in his fucked up brain, he  _ knows _ his real life is waiting for him in Boston. His boyfriend tried to call him four times today. His dad is alive and safe somewhere, and  _ he’s going to find him _ . But he’s gotten used to it. The pain, the fear, they welcomed him like an old friend. 

As he’s blearily watching coffee being made, he can feel the bulk of Derek’s presence next to him. It’s familiar. Reassuring. Uh. That’s not a word he thought he would associate with Derek Hale, ever. He remembers the young, power-drunk alpha and his pack of teenage hooligans, Erica’s black-rimmed eyes and Boyd’s stoic stance. This guy next to him… isn’t even wearing a leather jacket. 

Derek’s slouched form, the dark valleys under his eyes, the scraggly state of his scruff… He’s solid beside Stiles. He’s there. He has been there, through the whole of it. Stiles isn’t caffeinated, and he’s gonna blame the rush of fondness he’s currently experiencing on that.

Derek reaches for the coffee pot, now half full of a black, sluggish liquid. He pours some of it in a paper cup, adds two sugars, half the amount of coffee in milk, passes it to Stiles without a word. Stiles is not surprised that Derek knows how he takes his coffee. Coffee has been their main communication tool since Stiles came back. But he’s still so grateful he could cry. He inhales the sweet, comforting scent of the beverage and gets a little misty eyed. Damn he’s sleep deprived.

Derek makes his own coffee how he likes it (black like his soul). He takes a sip, releases an exhausted grunt. Stiles watches him squint his eyes, smack his lips. Right this second, he has no fucking idea how they got here. Regardless, he’s glad they’re here together. In a practical way: Lydia would have exploded by now. Scott would have bailed. Andy… Andy still doesn’t know the kind of creatures Beacon Hills harbors.

He wouldn’t understand. Stiles is sure of it. He wouldn’t get it. Derek gets it. Derek fucking invented this sort of expectant, angst-filled pain. So yeah, Stiles is glad the man standing next to him, hunched over a paper cup of kind-of-coffee, holding it like it holds the meaning of life, the universe, and everything, sleepy-eyed, uniform wrinkled beyond salvation, beard and hair unkempt, is teenage wet dream, angst made man, the-bite-is-a-gift, I-am-the-alpha-now, I-don’t-have-to-be-a-killer Derek Hale.

Derek clears his throat, then clears it some more. “Y’ alright? You… smell weird”, he asks Stiles, voice still a tone too husky.

Stiles simultaneously rolls his eyes and tries to subtly smell his pits. 

“Thanks buddy”, he answers. “That’s nice. I didn’t exactly have to opportunity to shower.”

Derek’s brow furrows. He shakes his head slowly, clutching his coffee cup. His eyes are only halfway open. 

“No, I meant. You know.”

Stiles doesn’t know.

“I meant”, Derek clarifies, “you smell like you’re freaking out.”

Stiles knows  _ that _ . “Don’t I smell like that all of the time?” he asks.

Derek’ head tilt concedes Stiles’ point. “But two minutes ago you just smelled like… I don’t know”, Derek keeps talking, “sleepy? And anxious?” He clearly looks like he regrets initiating this conversation. “But now you just smell like…” He makes a weird, stormy motion with the hand not holding coffee. 

Yeah. That’s accurate.

Stiles doesn’t really feel like sharing his touchy-feely friend-epiphany with the dude he just had it about. He deflects like the total pro he is.

“I’m still not sure about this Chris Argent thing”, Stiles answers. 

Derek rolls his halfway open eyes. 

“And I feel bad about earlier”, Stiles improvises. He looks at what’s left of his almost-coffee. “When I stormed- walked into the station. I think I startled Jenna. I think she was- she’s been- trying to help. And I’ve been-”, he gestures at himself vaguely, “you know.”

Derek nods like he does know.

“I should probably- apologize?” Stiles finishes lamely. The thought rolls uneasily in his stomach. When does Stile apologize, ever?

Derek is looking at him like he’s grown a second head. Wouldn’t that be awesome. He takes a sip of his black monstrosity. 

“Jenna’s seen worse”, he tells Stiles with his Serious face on. “She might not look it, but she’s tough. She doesn’t need you to… apologize.” Derek says the word as though it’s some kind of vicious torture. His eyebrows do that weird wondering thing they sometimes do. 

“You might want to apologize to Jordan, though”, he adds. “When this is all over.”

Stiles is so Affronted he can’t speak for several seconds. He crumples his empty paper cup in his hand, advances on Derek like a predator. Derek holds his coffee closer to himself, rolls his eyes.

“I will  _ never _ apologize to Parrish”, Stiles says, injecting as much of the power of Satan in his words he can manage. “He’s the  _ worst _ . All angelic looking and competent and shit. So fucking earnest. Dude can take a long walk off a short pier.”

Stiles is not 100% his argument was coherent, but he put enough venom in it to make it stick, and that’s what matters. Derek does seem at a loss for words. Ha. Stiles: 1, logic: 0.

They get a second cup of might-be coffee before they go meet Chris. They take the Jeep. Stiles drives, since he’s clearly the more awake of them both. Derek gives gruff, monosyllabic directions to a zoning complex close to a disaffected train station. God, Beacon Hills is a  _ ruin _ . The fact that some people still live completely normal lives in this dump baffles Stiles. If only they knew what goes on here, they’d all be packing up tonight. 

They leave the Jeep next to a dumpster and enter a dark, dusty warehouse. Stiles hums the Ghostbusters theme under his breath. Derek huffs quietly beside him. They stop abruptly at the sound of a shotgun cocking to their right. A flood light blinds them both for a second. Right there, next to a table overflowing with increasingly large and dramatic-looking weapons, is Chris Argent.

::

Chris Argent is just as Stiles remembers. He’s ruggedly handsome, in a silver fox kind of way. And he’s a  _ dick _ . 

He’s lecturing them in his self-assured, entitled way about the dangers of “sticking their noses in the affairs of the hunter community” and Stiles is so done with this guy. He’s afraid he’s going to pull a muscle if he keeps rolling his eyes that hard, but it’s either that or finding the nearest sporting goods store to buy a bat and beat him up with it. Unpractical. 

Derek‘s stance is defensive, feet apart, arms crossed, eyebrows furrowed, but he’s nodding as though Chris’ rant makes total sense and Stiles feels a bit betrayed. He picks up what looks like a hand grenade from the table and gets his hand viciously smacked away by Derek. Okay, this has gone on long enough.

“Why did you call us to the shadiest place even you could ever find in an already very shady town at 3am?” Stiles interrupts Chris mid-word. He crosses his arms, tries to emulate Derek in projecting how seriously done he is with Chris’s theatrics. “Because it can’t possibly be to lecture us on supernatural safety”, he goes on. “That ship has  _ sailed _ , buddy. Which you acutely know, since you did partake in most of the fun.”

Chris rolls his eyes at him (typical) and shares a commiserating look with Derek (uh). He lets go of the shotgun and fixes Stiles with his serious-hunter-not-to-be-fucked-with look. 

“This hide isn’t mine”, he explains. “It’s one of Gerard’s. And judging by the state of it, it hasn’t been used in a while.” He picks up a tiny notebook on a table, throws it to Stiles, who fumbles to catch it. It’s full of names, dates and phone numbers. 

“These are all the contacts who gave me info on Gerard, so you can check my sources”, Chris says. “Nobody’s seen him in more than a year. He’s been seen in Illinois and Michigan a couple years ago, then exclusively in NorCal.” He pauses for effect. “My sources say he’s been trying to find information about ancestral creatures, specifically shifters “gone wrong”. 

Derek and Stiles nod tersely at Chris. This type of no-nonsense information is exactly what Stiles needed. He would just like for it to have more substance to it. Chris gives them a self-satisfied smirk that Stiles would very much like to erase with the help of that German glock on the left corner of the table.

“But that’s not even the most interesting part”, Chris continues. He takes a step toward a pile of stuff in a dusty, dark corner. “I checked all of Gerard’s hides in the area- that I knew of, which turned out to be most of them.” 

Stiles opens his mouth to ask if they’re all as disgusting as this one but Chris turns toward him before he can say anything.

“They’re mostly small apartments and motel rooms, Stiles”, Chris says, condescending. “No torture chambers, no lairs.” 

Derek snorts next to him. Stiles punches his arm, then immediately shakes his hand to diffuse the pain radiating in his knuckles.

“Gerard’s clearly been staying in them for a long while”, Chris goes on, ignoring them, “but they all seem to have been abandoned months ago. I’d say the most recently vacated one is the one we’re standing in.” 

The pile of stuff they’re walking toward reveals itself to be a bunch of gross, tacky clothes strewn haphazardly together. They clearly need to be cleaned up. Preferably with fire.  They consider the pile for a while. 

“The weapons”, Derek speaks up. “They’re all his?”

Chris nods. “Except the shotgun. That’s mine”, he answers Derek with a smirk suggesting a private joke. Derek’s tight smile confirms it. Stiles is most definitely annoyed. He clears his throat loudly. Chris slowly turns his head toward him, unimpressed.

“I’ve also found a bunch of notes” Chris continues, “though I couldn’t put my hands on his computer.” He takes out a wad of crumpled notes out of his back pocket, offers them to Derek. They squint at them, heads bent together. 

“Most of it is illegible. His Parkinson’s been back, the last few years. But it’s mostly a list of rare, dark creatures, and some names. People from the town. Scott’s mentioned a few times. So is Melissa.” He takes a note from Derek’s hand, turns it over to show him where Melissa’s name is written. He turns toward Stiles. “And so is the Sheriff.” 

Stiles takes the paper from him, traces the shaky handwriting spelling “Sh. John Stilinski”. He gives the paper back to Derek. His hand is shaking.

“What does it mean?” Derek asks Chris.

Chris shrugs, scratches at the grief beard he’s still rocking. “I can only guess from here. But from the notes, the questions he’s been asking, and the state of his hides, I’d say… he’s been trying to create another beast. Something he can control.” 

Stiles and Derek share a wide-eyed look. It can’t be. This cannot be happen- No. Nope. Nah uh. But Stiles has to ask. 

“Like… a kanima?”

He sees the train wreck happening in Derek’s face even as he says it. It’s been ten years. This is ridiculous. Gerard wouldn’t. He’s not that stupid. 

Chris hesitates.

“Yes”, he says, nodding. “But it could be something else, too. He’s been researching for years.” Chris shuffles his feet. “His notes mention Parrish a few times. I believe he’s been researching ways to control, or- make a hellhound.”

Stiles throws his arms into the air. The notebook he was holding hits the floor. 

“Seriously”, he tells the dark roof of the warehouse. “Seriously?” he asks Derek.  “Seriously!” he yells at Chris. 

He gets no answer.

He paces the length of the warehouse while Derek and Chris draw closer to one another again, studying Gerard’s notes. 

“So, do you think he was looking to all these people as possible… victims?” Derek asks.

Chris considers it. “That’s entirely possible, yes. But I think the mentions of Melissa are something else. He was probably trying to use her as leverage against Scott. Again.”

Stiles doesn’t falter in his pacing to throw a slightly hysterical snort over his shoulder. 

“Because it worked out so well for him the first time around.” He stops pacing, looks at both men huddled together intently.  “This is crazy, right?” 

Both men nod slowly.

“It’s been ten years! He almost died! You-” Stiles points at Derek, mimes biting, “and you-” he points at Chris, mimes shooting. “It’s fucking insane!”

They look at him and nod carefully, like he might explode at any moment. Stiles needs air. He needs to sit down. He needs a smoke, and a drink. He needs Lydia. He needs his dad. His dad!

“Wait wait wait. What does all this”, he gestures around himself to the warehouse and the guns and the notes Derek’s still holding, “have to do with my dad?”

Chris gives Stiles a long look. “Your dad crashed into a car five days ago, right?”

Stiles gulps, nod slowly. His hands are shaking again.

“Did someone mention who the car belonged to?”

Stiles frowns, shakes his head. He turns to Derek, who looks just as puzzled. 

“No, why?” Stiles croaks out.

“The car was registered in Gerard’s name”, Chris says, all gravelly and serious and not even cringing a little bit. What a badass.

Stiles might crumble under the weight of this whatthefuckery. As it is, his butt makes close acquaintance with the cold concrete floor and his knees bracket his head.

“How did we miss this?” he asks Derek, voice coming through a tunnel.

Derek’s frowning at his hands, his scowl made even more impressive by the shadows on his face carved by the floodlight. 

“I don’t know”, he answers. “Terrence and Jenna checked the car crash link. I read the file, everything seemed clean.” He crumples the notes in his hands, eyes flashing the faintest bit of blue. “I don’t know”, he repeats.

Chris claps a hand on Derek’s shoulder. 

“I’ll send you what I found on this”, Chris tells him. “You’ll check it yourself, yeah?” 

Derek gives him a tight nod.

Stiles can’t fucking take this. But questions keeps bustling around in his head and he’s got to let some of them out. 

“I still don’t see…” he starts, “why would my dad crashing into Gerard’s car be… I don’t-”

Derek makes a pondering noise at the back of his throat. “The open case file. The research on the Argent family. Gerard surveilling Melissa.” He looks at Stiles. “Your dad might have been keeping an eye on Gerard since he came back, trying to keep him off Melissa. The car crash might have been some sort of… orchestrated intimidation.”

Fuck. That makes so much and so little sense at the same time.

Stiles keeps his head firmly between his knees as he talks to himself. “Okay. Okay okay okay okay.”

A shadow falls over him. Derek’s voice floats through his haze of confusion and fear. 

“Stiles. Breathe.” 

Stiles lets air into his protesting lungs, fills them up until they scream for mercy, releases it. Does it a few more times. Once he’s found his voice again, he looks up.

“Okay. So what?” he asks both men. “We need to find some sort of creature that might be a kanima but might not be, in order to find Gerard, who might lead us to my dad?” He looks around. “Isn’t that a bit…”

“- fucking crazy?” Derek finishes his thought.

Chris looks at them for a while, gives a short, military shrug. 

“Unless one of you has a better lead?”

Fuck. They’re  _ fucked _ . Stiles feels the need to point it out. 

“But this town is so fucked up!” he cries. “A kanima, a tortured soul… it could be anybody!”

Derek sighs.

“We could really use Deaton right about now”, Stiles muses.

Chris huffs. “Yeah… too bad he’s dead.”

The three of them nod in commiseration. Alan Deaton died of poisoning while studying a mystical plant provided by Malia, that she encountered in her travels somewhere close to the Himalaya. They found out from an allied pack a few weeks later that the only thing that could have saved him was to have been turned into a werewolf. Scott was bummed about it for a few weeks, but as Stiles kept repeating: at least Deaton died doing what he loved, being cryptic as fuck about the supernatural artifacts he was studying.

Silence hangs over them as Stiles tries to find the courage to say what they’re all thinking. 

“It’s been three, almost four days”, he says, voice rough. “My dad might be- He might dead.” He swallows, looks down at nothing in particular. “We don’t really have time to go on a search for yet another vengeful mythical creature.”

He feels Derek’s warm hand on his shoulder. He doesn’t shrug it off. 

“It’s our only lead”, Derek says, low. “I think we have to.”

Stiles lifts his head to find Derek’s eyes fixed on him. They share a searching look. Both seem to find what they were looking for in it, because Derek grabs Stiles’ hand, helps him stand up. Derek’s hand is warm and solid in his. Stiles nods at him. Yeah. They have to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> RIP Deaton


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is never too late for a little backstory...
> 
> love upon you people <3

They part soon after, Chris promising to keep checking his sources and share any clue as to who the possibly murderous creature might be. Derek and he share a very serious, comradely nod. Stiles kind of wants to pry, but he has a whale of a fish to fry right now.

Derek and Stiles are silent on the drive back to the station, both lost in confused, slightly terrified thoughts. Stiles keeps stealing glances at Derek, waiting for him to point them in the next direction. Stiles can’t do this. He’s been out of this supernatural crap for too long. This is Derek’s turf. This is Derek’s literal  _ job _ . Derek should- oh for fuck’s sake. He’s gotta do everything himself, doesn’t he?

“What do we do next?” he pushes the question at Derek. “Finding a… kanima – God I can’t believe I’m saying that word again –  will take ages.” 

Derek tightens his jaw, eyes on the road. He’s listening. 

“Shouldn’t we start with all the disappearances from a few months to a year ago?”, Stiles keeps asking, on a roll. “If Gerard managed to make a new creature, he probably skipped town with it around the time his hides went cold, right? Derek?” 

Stiles would take one hand off the wheel and prod Derek in the thigh to get him to react, if his hands weren’t shaking like crazy. Stiles decides to just wait him out.

They’re almost at the station when Derek finally turns toward Stiles, brow pinched. 

“He needs an alpha”, Derek says, voice is so low that Stiles misses the entire thing. 

“What?” he asks, a bit frantic.

Derek barely huffs. “He needs an alpha”, he repeats. “To make a kanima. He needs the bite.”

Stiles considers that. “Unless he’s found a way to go all Dread Doctors on us.” 

Derek gives him a quizzical look. Stiles glances at him, shakes his head. 

“Right. You weren’t here for that one. Nevermind.”

Stiles parks in the deserted station parking lot. He turns toward Derek. 

“If he was trying to make a traditional – ugh – kanima…. yeah, he would need an alpha to give them the bite”, Stiles confirms. He snaps his fingers in Derek’s face three times. Derek looks vaguely offended. 

“D’you think that’s why he was looking to use Melissa on Scott?” Stiles asks. “Blackmail him into it?” 

Derek gives him a considering nod. Wheels are spinning inside Stiles’ head, making him jump from one thought to the next. 

“We know Gerard will form the weirdest, most fucked up alliances to get what he wants”, he wonders aloud. “Deucalion is still around somewhere, right? Or is he dead?” He doesn’t give Derek the opportunity to answer. “Or he might have found a way to make a creature without the help of a shifter…” 

He smacks himself on the forehead, making Derek jump. “What if Gerard’s made himself a hellhound puppet? But I mean, we would have heard of it before now right? He wouldn’t have left without causing at least a little bit of chaos and mayhem. And what the fuck does my dad have to do with any of this? I mean none of this ma—“

“Stiles!”

Stiles cuts off mid-word, looks at Derek. He’s breathing harshly, eyes faintly glowing blue. Uh. Maybe Stiles should stop stressing out the sleep-deprived werewolf. Yeah. Good idea. He shuts his mouth, heaves one or two long breaths. Derek’s eyes glow stronger for a second, then fade entirely. 

Stiles gives Derek an assessing nod, waits for it to be returned before he exits the car.

::

Derek pulls up all the missing person cases of the last year, and they go over them together in the Sheriff’s office until the sun comes up and the station starts filling in. They’re both too wired to sleep anyway. When each case starts to look like yet another dead end, Stiles decides to release some tension by nagging Derek about something that’s been bothering him for a while.

He yawns loud and wide, lets himself slouch low on the couch. Derek is bent over the file of a missing fifteen year old, brow pulled together, in the Zone. Stiles extends his leg to kick at his foot a little bit. A little bit more. Yeah, he’s just gonna keep going. He’s worked up to a steady rhythm when Derek’s head snaps up to look at Stiles, annoyed. Mission accomplished.

“What’s up with trusting the hunter, Derek?”

Derek gives him a “uh” look. Stiles rolls his eyes. 

“Chris”, he clarifies. “You guys looked borderline chummy earlier. What gives?”

Derek’s face is as unimpressed as he can manage, sleep deprived and stress-ridden. 

“You jealous?”

Stiles scoffs with his whole upper body. “No. It’s weird, is all”, he answers, petulant.

Derek shrugs at him, goes back to the case.

No no no. This is not over. Stiles needs to let off his frustrations and Derek is his designated guinea pig and this is happening. 

“He’s a hunter, Derek”, Stiles says. “You’re a werewolf. Him, hunter. You, werewolf.”

Derek doesn’t lift his eyes up. “I got the picture, thanks.”

“Don’t sarcasm me. I am the sarcasm master. I can make you my sarcasm bitch. Tell me. What. gives.”

Derek lifts his head, glaring. He rolls back his shoulders, then slumps into the couch next to Stiles. He gives him the world-weariest sigh. 

“When I was in Seattle”, he starts, “Chris contacted me. He’d found Kate.” Derek scratches at his artful-turned-scraggly stubble, looks away. “He asked for my help… taking care of her.” More scratching. Jesus, it’s like pulling teeth. 

“And?” Stiles prompts.

“I said no at first but. We spent a couple of months tracking her. And when the moment came, I- I couldn’t.” Derek bows his head in shame, as if the fact that he couldn’t murder somebody, even his psychotic ex, is a bad thing. Weirdo. “Chris shot her in the chest, twice. We burned her body, spread the ashes over a field in Montana. I went back to Seattle.” He takes a sip of water, fixes Stiles with a look. “Happy now?”

Stiles looks down at his hands. “Uh, yeah.” 

Derek closes the file in front of him. “I think we should call it a night”, he says, looking out the window, “… or day. Whatever.” He gets up, a few files under his arm, glances quickly at Stiles over his shoulder. “You should get some sleep.” 

Stiles nods in agreement, not looking up. When he finally has the courage to do so, Derek has left.

::

Stiles is lying on the sofa in his dad’s office, willing himself to go to sleep. But his body’s vibrating anxious energy. The noises of the slowly awakening station keep pulling him out of his drowsiness. He blinks his eyes shut, then open. He watches rays of morning sun pierce through the blinds, stretching shadows across the floor. 

A knock. Then a head peaks in. Deputy Jenna smiles at him hesitantly. “Hey Stiles… Sorry, didn’t know you were awake. Anything I can do for you?”

Stiles forces himself to smile back. This chick is basically Bambi, and Stiles has no intention of being the hunter in her story. He could care less, really. But he can’t muster up the energy to be a dick to someone who looks so clueless. Even though she might or might not have a thing for Derek. Which is not any of Stiles’ business anyway.

“Hey Jenna. I’m okay, thanks”, he answers, as friendly-ish as he can manage. “Just trying to catch some z’s. Me and Derek were awake all night.” He doesn’t know why he tacked this information on with the rest. Oh well.

Jenna shuffles on her feet, gives him a tight, shy smile. “Gotcha. Yell if you need anything.” She closes the door quietly behind herself.

Stiles wiggles around on his back, waits and waits and waits for sleep to take him. He’s almost there, so close, when his phone starts buzzing. He should really just drop it into a vat of acid.

Andy’s name flashes at him, across an old picture of the two of them, wind-swept and smiling at the camera, a blurry, grey Brooklyn Bridge barely visible behind them.

Okay, Stiles can do this. He can talk to his gorgeous, well-adjusted, totally normal boyfriend. That is a thing Stiles can do. That is a thing Stiles will do. Aaany minute now.

“‘Lo?” Damn, his voice is rough.

A few second of puzzled silence. 

“Stiles?”

He clears his throat, or tries to, and pushes himself upright. Well, upright-er. He’s not entirely confident in his ability to stand, or sit, or use his muscles right now.

“Hey snookums”, he tries again. _ Snookums.  _ That one is beneath even him. The perplexed silence on the other end of the line tells him as much.

“Hey Stiles”, Andy says hesitantly. They haven’t talked in… two, three days? Everything's a blur of fear and questions and vague threats of physical pain toward Parrish. He doesn’t even know where Andy is.

“Hey babe.” More throat clearing. “How you doin’? Where are you?”

This goddam silence at the other end of the line, again. Andy has never been talkative, but he’s never been hesitant, careful like that with Stiles either.

“I’m in San Francisco”, Andy answers. 

Right. Their maybe, possibly, definitely romantic getaway. Goddam fucking fuck.

“Right.” He really doesn’t know what else to say. His boyfriend is waiting for him to join him on a romantic weekend. And his dad is missing and possibly embroidered into a geriatric hunter’s plot to make a creature of doom. There’s no reconciling the two.

“... what about you?”, Andy asks. “How are you? Any news about your dad? I’ve been trying to call….”

Yeah, he’s definitely been trying to call. He’s even texted a couple times. But Stiles was - busy. Passed out. Looking and looking and looking for clues and trying not to hyperventilate. Drinking coffee with Derek. Picking up the pieces of his dad’s life and trying to fit them into a coherent puzzle. He was Here. And Andy was There. And everything sucks.

“Yeah, yeah I know”, Stiles says, cringing. “Sorry, been busy trying to help the police out.” He scratches at his head. He sounds so awkward on the phone with his boyfriend of six years. It’s like he’s a pod person. “We- they’ve got a lead, so… been working on that.”

“You’ve been working with the cops?” 

Uh oh. That’s Andy’s this-is-a-bad-idea tone. It’s the one he gave Stiles when he wanted blue tiles for the master bathroom. Ok, sure. Stiles needs to remind himself that Andy doesn’t know this part of him. This “investigating supernatural mysteries was the biggest and scariest part of my formative years” Stiles. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t mean to be- whatever.

“Yeah, it’s- it’s no big deal, really. Just helping on the… computer stuff”, Stiles half-lies.

Andy gives an unsure sigh. This goddam silence between them.

“Okay, yeah”, Andy says, conciliatory. “But- don’t you think you should maybe- take a step back?”

Stiles is not exactly sure what is happening but he thinks he’s yelling. He’s yelling something about his father being missing and how could he take a fucking step back what kind of bullshit is this Andy how can you but he’s not sure he’s the one controlling his mouth right now. 

Andy’s yelling over him. “Okay OKAY, I’m SORRY Stiles, calm down. I’m sorry.”

There’s silence so that means Stiles probably shut his mouth. He’s breathing hard through his mouth. His thought are cotton-y, weighed down by exhaustion and adrenaline.

Andy’s voice is low and soothing. Stiles knows that voice so well. It’s smooth and comforting like the sheets in their bed. 

“You don’t have to do this on your own, Stiles”, Andy coddles. “I can- I’ll be there for you. Let me be there. I’ll come, I just have this one big signing tomorrow then I can-”

Well. That’s- unexpected. And it’s weird, that Stiles didn’t expect his long-term boyfriend to hop on a plane when he really, really fucking needs him. Stiles pushes the weirdness aside, considers the idea for a moment. Andy here by his side, holding his hand and putting his big palm over Stiles’s heart when his breaths start to hitch. Making him eat and switching him to decaf’ and holding him while he sleeps. Letting his fingers rake lazily through Stiles’ hair. That would be. That would be nice. Great. Amazing. Essential.

Andy in Beacon Hills, discovering the town where Stiles grew up. Seeing his dad’s house, the station. Meeting Parrish, and Melissa. And Derek. Andy would probably end up making friends with everyone. Even Parrish. They wouldn’t be able to sleep on the couch together. Stiles would have to go back to his dad’s house.

And they’d have to hide the supernatural bits of their investigation. Is that even possible at this point? What if Andy gets suspicious of all the hours Stiles is putting in at the station? What if something happens? What if they find the kanima or whatever, and Andy sees it? What if Andy gets hurt? What if he asks how Stiles and Derek know each other? What if he hates it all: Beacon Hills, the house, Stiles as he is now?

“No, babe”, Stiles croaks out. “Thanks, but… I don’t think-”

“Stiles, please. Let me-”

“Andy, I just-”, he stops, pulling at his hair, “you need to do the book tour. It’s important.”

Andy huffs, contrary and reasonable and everything Stiles needs. “ _ You _ are important.”

Right. He is. He tends to… forget. It doesn’t matter anyway. 

“Thanks babe.” Stiles voice keeps getting smaller. “You too. But… I think I need to do this on my own.”

This silence has tones of annoyance. 

“I don’t understand”, Andy says, stung. Rejected. “Do what?”

Shame washes through Stiles in waves. He sighs, because there’s no way to say: “I need to finish conducting this supernatural investigation into my dad’s disappearance with my werewolf cop friend, which might end in an epic face-off with a kanima.” So he doesn’t say anything.

“Stiles. Do what?” Andy repeats, giving in to anger.

“This”, Stiles says, defeated. “Looking for my dad, Beacon Hills, I need to. Do it alone. I’m sor-”

“Don’t”, Andy cuts him off. “Don’t  _ apologize _ to me. Your dad is  _ missing _ . And you don’t want me there, with you. I- I don’t get it. I thought we got past this. I thought we were a team.” Stiles can hear him swallowing his disappointment. “We’re in a relationship”, he tells Stiles, as if he needs reminding. “I could be there for you. I could... You’re-”

“I’m sorry”, Stiles interrupts lamely.

Andy sighs. “Yeah, me too. Nevermind.”

“Talk to you later?”

Silence. Fuck it, Stiles attacks his sleeve viciously with his teeth.

“Sure”, Andy says around a sigh. “Later, Stiles.”

Stiles lets his phone drop on his chest. He takes a minute or two to feel like the worst boyfriend ever. He hasn’t felt this way in a couple of years. He doesn’t like this particular reminder of how it felt.

Andy is Stiles’ sure thing. They’ve worked so hard to get to a good, healthy, in-love place. Stiles can’t jeopardize that. But he feels- he feels as though it’s gone already. As though it slipped through his fingers ages ago and he’s just now opening his hands and realizing they’re empty. A week ago he was sanding cupboards in his brand new kitchen and bickering about placemats vs tablecloth with his boyfriend and now he’s here and he’s alone. He’s felt alone for a while.

When they met, Stiles’ sophomore year, Andy was Stiles’ TA in French literature. Stiles had taken the class to take a breather from all his comp sci classes. It was both not as, and much more exciting than what he expected.

Andy was Stiles’ first relationship after Malia. He was also the first guy Stiles ever kissed. And other things. It had taken them a good six months to get from their first "date" (a totally fake study session) to actually dating, and a lot more time to admit to each other that they were serious.

That first “date” happened in late November, when Stiles was all blue from the holidays after his dad and Lydia had bailed on him for Thanksgiving. Andy had walked him to the tiny off-campus apartment he shared with Lydia and kissed him on his doorstep. Stiles had been… speechless. That never happened.

After that, they had a thing. A will-they won’t-they you’re-my-teacher-it’s-hot-but-it’s-wrong  _ thing _ . Then Stiles passed his finals. Andy wasn’t his TA anymore. They went on a first official for-real-this-time date. Andy turned Stiles speechless a bunch of times after that.

They dated for almost a year before they realized it was serious between them. And when they did, obviously, Stiles freaked out. They broke up. Stiles spent months being lonely and miserable, trying to remember all the good reasons why he broke up with Andy. There were a lot of reasons, but none of them were good. They got back together at the start of Stiles’ senior year. Stiles moved in Andy’s much more spacious apartment right then.

Andy celebrated finishing his thesis by buying a house. Stiles bought every home improvement catalogues he could get his hands on. He got passionate about bathroom tiles and the right kind of wood for bedroom furniture and paint swatches.

They were good. So good. They had friends, as a fucking  _ couple _ . Andy received Scott’s stamp of approval after a very boring (for Stiles) evening spent talking passionately (for Andy and Scott) about storks’ migration habits across North America. The Sheriff loved Andy, mostly because he would stoically sit there and let the Sheriff talk to him about baseball for hours while nursing a beer. 

Andy never warmed up to Lydia though. Maybe it’s because Lydia makes Stiles french-tuck his shirt every goddam time they go out together. Or comments on the state of Stiles' nails. Or nags him about getting a haircut every two months. Maybe those are the reasons why  _ Stiles  _ doesn’t like Lydia. He can’t be sure. Lydia never warned up to Andy either. She told Stiles once, when they moved in together, that she thought Stiles could do better. But what does Lydia know, she’s sleeping with  _ Parrish _ .

Andy is a good guy, but more than that, he loves Stiles. He grounds him, accepts him for what he is, enjoys snarking at and with him. They are good together.

But for all that he trusts Andy with his life, Stiles never came around to tell him about the shapeshifters and creatures of the night that still haunt his nightmares. He couldn’t see himself say: “Hey babe. You know the nightmares you think are about my mom’s death? Turns out most of them are about the monsters that chased me and my best friends around for four years in high school. Werewolves are a thing! Lydia’s a banshee! Oh, and I was an ancestral Japanese demon for a while too. Pretty sure this body’s not entirely natural. Pass the salt, please.” At that point it had become such a small part of his life anyway, he decided it wasn’t worth the headache.

Andy isn’t perfect. He’s selfish. But Stiles can handle selfish. After all, he’s best friends with Lydia. Andy’s a bit of a snob. But then again, see: friendship with Lydia. And he’s whiny. But Stiles grew up with Scott, so he’s all set. 

Andy isn’t perfect, but he might be perfect for Stiles. Well. Boston Stiles. The Stiles he rebuilt from ground zero after Beacon Hills and panic attacks and almost dropping out of college and realizing he might maybe, definitely, be into guys too. 

And yeah… maybe Stiles is worried he built that person around his relationship with Andy. That that person has no true sense of self outside of their relationship, and that’s why it has worked for all these years, and that’s also why it won’t work in Beacon Hills. 

Stiles is exhausted. He doesn’t want to think this way. He has more than enough bad things to think about. He’ll find his dad, solve this nightmare with the help of his old friends (and Parrish), and go back to Boston and his tiny house and his almost-perfect boyfriend. Andy and he will find their way back to each other, as they always do. Yeah. Definitely.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a tiny (but really fun!) chapter  
> couldn't help it :D

Stiles wakes up to a gentle knock on the office door. He sits up. The yellow light of nearby streetlamps pierce the darkness through the blinds. 

Fuck, he slept through the day.

The door opens, light spilling in and framing Parrish’s perfectly pressed uniform. Ugh.

“Time is it?” Stiles mumbles. He’s pretty proud of himself for not starting his.... day? night? with an insult right off the bat.

Parrish smiles at him, in a way that is probably affable and friendly. All Stiles can see is douche. 

“About 7pm. Guess you slept through the day, uh?”

Well. Thank you Officer Obvious. So fucking helpful. Stiles screws up his face in something he hopes approaches politely interested. 

“Guess so”, he answers. “Is Derek in?”

Parrish shakes his head, standing awkwardly in the door frame. 

“He switched to night shift”, he says. “He’ll come in in an hour or so.” He keeps standing there, watching Stiles as he swings his legs off the couch and rakes his hands through his hair to wake himself up. 

“Is there coffee?” Stiles asks.

Parrish has the decency to check before he gives Stiles a regretful (totally fake, in Stiles’ opinion) shake of his head. 

“We’re out. Sorry.” He hesitates. “I could make some?”

Stiles may be still half asleep and his body might soon stage a protest if he doesn’t change his sleeping habits, but. He’s still Stiles Stilinski, son of the Sheriff of Beacon Hills, debunker of myths, mysteries and asshats. Something is Afoot here.

He squints at Parrish who is still fucking standing there. 

“Did Lydia tell you to check up on me?” Stiles asks him.

Parrish emits a very discreet gulp. He nods. Ah. Dude is so whipped. Stiles would be pissed if he didn’t find it amusing. 

“Okay”, he says. “Whatever. I’m fine. You can go now. Report to your master.”

Parrish finally takes a step forward into the office. “Stiles, I—“

“Go, Parrish.”

The deputy eats his words. He nods briskly and closes the door behind himself.

In the relative privacy of his dad’s office, Stiles takes inventory of his limbs. Hands, arms and legs all seem to be working with minimal joint popping. Back and neck are firmly Against. Against what, Stiles isn’t sure. But they’re Against it. He feels groggy and gross. He needs a shower. He’s out of toothpaste. He should go back to his dad’s house, for a shower at least. So he’ll be marginally more human when Derek gets here and they can dive right back into business, wherever that may take them.

Stiles nods to himself, satisfied with his plan. He slips out of the office unnoticed. Thankfully he doesn’t run into Parrish again. The Jeep is right where he left it last night. This morning. Whatever. For a second, as he slips his keys in the ignition, he feels like he’s himself, at last. Just Stiles, his Jeep, his determination and a half-assed plan. The rest of the world can bite it. It’s great. Then it’s over. He’s exhausted and scared. His dad is still missing and his best friend is on vacation with a girl he never heard of. He thinks of calling Lydia, but she betrayed him by setting Parrish after him. He thinks of calling Derek, but the dude deserve one more hour of freedom. Stiles shakes it off. It’s him, the Jeep, and the rest of the world can bite it. He starts the car.

::

The house seems darker somehow, almost sinister. Stiles tries to shake it off but as he steps forward to the front porch, chills run down his spine like hundreds of tiny spiders.

Something isn't right. Well, no shit Sherlock. Something evil is most definitely going on here and Stiles should really, really turn back and leave. Or at least call someone. Backup. Derek. Jordan. Scott. Lydia. Andy. Britney Spears. The entire motherfuckin cast of High School Musical. Someone.

Instead, he chews on the sleeve of this old hoodie he found in a locker at the station. He takes a step forward, alone and weaponless. Then another. And another. He's walking steadily toward danger, like a moron. It’s almost laughable. If it were a horror movie, he'd be yelling at the moron on screen to STOP WALKING and just FUCKING LEAVE ASSHAT and Andy would be smirking and thumping on his shoulder to get him to consider sparing their neighbors' sleep. But this is real life, fuck him. And he's still walking and chewing. There's not a single preservation instinct in his body.

He gets to the door. His thoughts are muddled, sluggish. He knows where he is, who he is, but he feels no real interest in holding on to this knowledge. It doesn't matter. He's bored. He's tired. He's empty. He pushes the door open. He doesn't need a key. It’s weird but feeling weird requires energy and Stiles is all out.

The inside of the house is so black. He feels like if he walked into it, he'd be swallowed by it. It's not an unpleasant thought to have, especially when it's the only thought in his brain. The darkness seems to be moving, buzzing slightly at the edges. Stiles looks and looks and looks. It feels like the darkness is coming from him, like it's part of him and he's part of it and they're a whole and that's nice. That's... nice...

He hasn't moved but he's in the middle of the room. Everything feels like cotton: the air, his hands, his eyelids. He's blinking slower and slower. Something catches the damp edge of his sleeve and tugs. He turns his head, the cotton around him moving with him.

There’s a shape. A thing. It is tall and lanky and it is made of the darkness swallowing them. It's a girl. It's a creature. It's Deputy Jenna.

Uh. The girl who has a crush on Derek is evil. Dude  _ cannot  _ catch a break.

Her face is the same. Except it is very pale or very dark, Stiles can't be sure. Her eyes are big and she - it - is not blinking. She - it - is still holding on to Stiles' hoodie. She's smiling. Or showing her teeth. Her many, many teeth in her - its - giant, gaping, black mouth.

Stiles is trying to think, well, anything but he's really busy reminding himself to breathe.

Deputy Jenna - it - smiles wider. She - it - is talking except her - its - giant gaping mouth is not moving and it's the Sheriff’s voice saying "hey, kiddo".

Stiles’ jaw hits the floor.

Then his eardrums explode. He’s lying on the floor, his knee hurts and there’s something wet and sticky dripping down his cheek. It’s probably blood. There’s a lot of ringing and- the ceiling light is turned on. Derek’s there. He’s wolfed out, teeth bared in a snarl. His roar is still ringing into the air around them. 

Stiles’ thoughts and sensations come back to him like lightning and leave just as quickly as he gasps for air. Derek kneels next to him, lays a hand on his face. He’s still wolfed out.

“You okay?” he growls through his fangs.

Stiles nods. Then, for dramatic flair, he passes out.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> too many chapters in a row? 
> 
> Lydia's back ! :)  
> thank you guys for your comments <3

Stiles is awake. He thinks he’s awake, but he can’t see anything. He tries to blink, but his eyelids are heavy and everything is blurry. He’s lying down. He tries to move his arms and legs, but that makes him sink further down into whatever he’s lying down on. He feels a particularly lumpy lump on his lower back. He knows that lump. This is his dad’s couch, in his office. Okay. He’s lying down in his dad’s office, and everything is blurry. Okay okay okay.

Faint sounds reach him, like people talking but through a fishbowl. He can’t make out any words in their rapid fire debit, but the particular strain in their insistent tone tells Stiles everything he needs to know.  _ Lydia _ . Lydia’s here. He reaches out blindly, his limbs awkward and uncoordinated, as his mind comes to a startlingly clear conclusion: if Lydia’s here, he’s in trouble.

Something seizes his hand. It’s tiny, smooth, cool, and gripping fiercely. Yup. Definitely Lydia. Oh man, he’s in  _ trouble _ . She says his name. His vision and hearing abruptly clear out. Suddenly everything is in HD and three-dimensional. It’s too much. His mind blanks.

“It’s okay Stiles. You’re okay”, Lydia is telling him on a loop.

He looks at her as she leans over him, brow furrowed. Over her shoulder, barely hovering, is Derek. In the corner of the room, knowing his rightful place, is Parrish. Ugh.

Stiles tries to sit up, but Lydia lays a palm on his chest, gently pushing back. He lets her. He’s not sure he could actually resist her.

He’s about to open his mouth and try words when Lydia sits primly on the edge of the couch, next to his legs. She keeps his hand in hers. Stiles squeezes, grateful. She uses her patient, level, “Stiles is on the verge of a nervous breakdown” voice, which is scary in and off itself.

“You’re okay”, she repeats. “We’re at the station. You’re okay. Derek found you at the house. Your dad’s house. Jenna, she’s…” Lydia squeezes his hands harder for a second. “We don’t know what she is, exactly, yet. But… we’re pretty sure she’s the one who’s got your dad. And Gerard, probably. You’re okay. Derek got there in time.”

Lydia leans further over him, almost whispering. “When she— I  _ felt _ it. It was like the earth was shaking, I just… I knew. I jumped into the first flight out, I… You’re okay. You were unconscious for fourteen hours. Just sleeping it off, don’t worry. We don’t know what  _ it _ is, yet. We’re looking into it. Us” – a quick glance at Parrish – “Chris Argent, the pack. Scott’s pack”, Lydia tacks on like it needed precision. Maybe it did.

Stiles breathes, takes the time to absorb the wave of information Lydia poured on him. Okay. Jenna. Yeah, he remembers. It was her, but it wasn’t. It was dark, and the darkness seemed more real than skin and bones. She- she  _ took _ him, something from him. He felt like, like… that’s what death must feel like. He leans over the couch and quietly empties his guts on the floor, Lydia petting at his hair.

Yeah. That Jenna chick is evil. Definitely evil.

::

Lydia makes him sit upright and drink a glass of water, then another.

Stiles pushes away the third one, dizziness fading away. Lydia is next to him, petting his back, his neck. Derek has ducked outside to take a phone call. Stiles can see him pacing through the open door.

"What happened?" Jordan asks, standing stiff in the corner.

With stilted words, Stiles tells them all he can remember. Darkness. His jumbled thoughts. Feeling empty. Darkness. Jenna being Jenna and something else, something terrifying and inviting. Darkness. His dad's voice.

His dad's  _ voice _ . He looks up at them, Lydia, Parrish, Derek, who's slipped back in and is leaning on his dad's desk, jaw clenched, arms folded. He looks a lot like his old self like this, angry and tense. Something weird grows in Stiles' chest. He swallows against it.

"My  _ dad”,  _ he croaks out. “What do you think it means?"

They look at each other, at a loss for words.

"Chris might have an idea", Derek speaks up.

Oh. That explains the phone call.

"From what you told us, what Lydia felt and what I- I saw, he thinks it might be a..." he sighs, scrubs a hand over his face, like he can't believe what he's about to say.

Lydia gives him a stern “spit it out” look.

"A demon?" Derek finishes lamely.

Yeah, no. No no. "Gerard Argent made a  _ demon _ ?" Stiles all but shrieks.

"Don't be ridiculous", Lydia chides. "You can't  _ make _ a demon. They've been here since the dawn of times."

Okay. Well. This is all news to Stiles.

"But how? What?" Stiles relies on his arm flailing to convey just how much how and what he means.

Derek gives him a sympathetic, equally incredulous grimace.

"I don't know." A shrug. "But Chris might have a way to find out."

::

Chris' idea is the  _ worst _ and Stiles doesn't know how he didn't see that coming. They've got a track record, he should have known. But, as Derek's eyebrows seem to point out, they don't have a choice. Time is running out. It’s this or keep stumbling blindly toward disaster while a demon is on the loose.

Still, Stiles should make his displeasure known, just to avoid any miscommunication.

“This plan sucks”, he says as loud as he can. Which is not very loud, and a bit croaky. He’s still recovering from whatever the evil bitch demon did to him. It’s loud enough for Chris to pause in his explanations to Lydia and spare him a long-suffering look. Stiles feels a little bit better.

“Got any other ideas?” Chris asks snottily. This guy has no self-preservation instincts at all. Case in point, between ignoring Stiles and not, he chose the option “antagonize the sarcastic trauma victim”. He can’t be trusted with delicate demon-hunting operations. Stiles is about to point all that out when Derek appears next to him bearing the nectar of the gods (police station coffee. same), pressing a paper cup in his hand. Stiles could kiss him. Or, shake his hand.

Derek gives Stiles a “be good” look. He would fight that look in different circumstances, but he kinda feels like a truck ran him over twenty hours ago. He settles back into the couch cushions, waggles his eyebrows at Derek in a “we’re not done with this” way.

“-les. Stiles!”

Stiles snaps back to reality at Lydia’s out-of-patience tone. She’s looking at him expectantly, eyebrows almost to her hairline. Mmh. She could give Derek a run for his money.

“Yeah, totally”, Stiles answers. “What?” Stiles feels he’s digging himself a bigger grave here. Lydia’s eyebrows seem to agree.

“We were  _ saying _ , I’ll use your subconscious to try and find a connection to- her, Jenna, whatever, and find where she keeps your dad.” A quick glance at Chris. ”And possibly Gerard.”

Chris twists his mouth in a way that suggests finding his dad is really not a priority of his. Stiles gains newfound respect for him.

“Okay”, Stiles says haltingly. “Sounds fake but okay.” 

Nobody even has the decency to smile at his joke. Heathens. 

“But how will you use my subconscious exactly?” he asks. “Because if the plan is hypnotizing me, thanks, I’ll pass.”

Lydia pinches the bridge of her nose. Uh oh. “Have you been  _ listening _ at all, instead of pouting and complaining and making eyes at Der-”

“Hey now”, Parrish interrupts. Meddlesome asshole. “Everybody’s tired and on edge here, no need to get snappy.” 

Ugh. Who does he think he is stepping in between him and Lydia? Stiles can take care of himself. Lydia rolls her eyes with her whole body. That’s a thing she picked up from Stiles. Charmed, he smiles up at her. She smiles back. And totally ignores Jordan. Ah! Take that, Parrish.

Lydia sits next to him on the couch, lets her body fit his as she leans against him, head on his shoulder. She must be more panicked than Stiles realized. He plays with her hair. She pretends not to like it. 

“We’ll connect my subconscious to yours”, she explains. “Hopefully that will be enough.” 

Stiles raises an eyebrow at her to ask the question she knows he’s going to ask. She does. 

“We’ll do it old school. You know, with the…” 

She makes a claw gesture with her right hand. Derek’s shoulders stiffen from across the room. Stiles connects the dots. 

“Oh.” Yeah. That’s the understatement of the year. Their plan is for Derek to plant his claws in their spine to connect their minds, like back in the good old days of the nogistune. Fun. Fun fun fun. Fun all around. 

”Isn’t it... better, uh… if an alpha does it?” Stiles asks, avoiding Derek’s gaze.

Lydia, her head still on his shoulder, picks up his hand, plays with his fingers. In Stiles’ peripheral vision, Derek's shoulders are almost up to his ears. 

“We haven’t been able to get in touch with Scott yet”, Lydia answers. “He’s still on vacation mini-break whatever. Kira keeps trying his cell every half-hour tough.” Lydia squeezes Stiles’ hand, doesn’t comment further. “Derek is the most experienced werewolf we have.” She takes her head off his shoulder, looks for his eyes. “Also it’s better if it’s someone you know. A friend. Derek will keep you tethered to him. You won’t get lost in your own mind.”

Chris Argent emits a tiny, barely-there scoff at that, which thankfully distracts Stiles from thinking too hard about being tethered to Derek.

Lydia squeezes his hand again, bringing him back to her. 

“Ok?” she asks, earnest.

Stiles breathes in and out slowly. No, it’s not okay. Nothing is ok. His dad is still missing and his best friend is about to use powers she’s afraid of to connect him to a demon who attacked him. Stiles feels like he’s constantly fighting the beginning of a panic attack and he doesn’t know who he is anymore. He built himself from the ruins of a young man this town had left him with, and all his carefully crafted work has been wrecked, yet again, by the same town. The same supernatural bullshit. The same “we might yet make it out alive by a hair” rush he’s learned to loathe. It’s not ok. He’s not ok.

But Lydia’s leaning against him and looking for determination in his eyes. He turns his head toward Derek. They look at each other and Stiles has no idea what there is to find in his eyes. But Derek is as he always is: present and unwavering.

“Yeah”, Stiles says. “Okay, yeah. Let’s do this.”


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU guys for your comments. they're so great <3
> 
> hope you like this one.

Stiles is in his kitchen. Not his dad’s kitchen, not Lydia and his kitchen from their apartment off campus. His kitchen. With the half-sanded cupboards and the unopened box of mismatched mugs and expensive Italian coffee machine and brand new pots and pans. He’s emptying the dishwasher when he hears Lydia’s voice calling for him. He sets cutlery down on the counter, looks around the room. She’s not here. Her voice comes from further away, like the end of the hall. He pads down the hallway leading to his and Andy’s bedroom.

No Lydia. Weird. 

He’s wearing his faded Stud Muffin t-shirt. He could have sworn he threw it away when he moved out of his dad’s. It’s a lot snug across the shoulders.

Lydia’s calling his name again. Maybe she’s outside. He rounds the corner to the dining room, opens the back door to the garden, steps out of the house. 

He’s in the tunnels under Eichen House, and he’s running. He doesn’t know why. It’s pretty awkward running in his house slippers. Lydia’s voice is louder, sharper too. The tunnels echo endless pleas for Stiles to hurry around him. The air is damp, unbearably hot. He shucks his slippers off, runs faster barefoot. He gets to the end of the tunnel. It opens into a clearing in the middle of the woods. 

A gigantic tree stump stands imposing, terrifying in the middle of the clearing. Stiles is shivering, barefoot in the fallen leaves, the sleeting rain dampening his too-small shirt. He wonders briefly what he’s doing here, but he has to curl in over himself and cover his ears as Lydia screams and screams and screams, her banshee cry increased tenfold by the Nemeton’s strange power.

Stiles feels blood trickle drop by drop from his ears, tears streaking his face. His brain is exploding or melting or swelling or gone gone gone gone. 

He feels a hand on his shoulder. It’s big and warm, not Lydia’s. It’s clawed, but it’s not looking to hurt Stiles. The hand is holding him upright with superhuman strength, but somehow gentle on each point of contact with Stiles’ fragile human skin. Stiles looks over his shoulder; all he can see are two points of piercing blue light. He takes a breath and-

::

He’s slumped on the couch in his dad’s office. Again. He feels a feather-light touch on his neck, jumps when he takes in the heavily tattooed fingers of Chris Argent. Chris’ other hand comes up to hold him still.

“Don’t move. I’m dressing your cuts. Derek had to… go a little deeper than usual.”

Yeah, no shit. Stiles can’t remember much, except that it was really fucking intense. He tries to talk, but his voice has left him.

Chris squeezes his neck once. “You won’t be able to move or speak for a little while longer. But you’re fine, don’t worry. It went well.”

Only then does Stiles truly take stock of his surroundings. He’s alone with Chris, blinds drawn. No Derek. No Lydia. Stiles tries to move his head toward Chris, but he keeps him facing forward.

“Lydia’s fine. She’s resting in the break room. This… took a lot out of her.” A pause. “Her powers are truly remarkable”, Chris adds with all the creepiness of a creature hunter slash collector, ruining the good thing they had going on. Well. It was fun while it lasted.

Stiles tries his voice again as Chris rounds the couch to face him. 

“And Derek?” he asks breathily.

Chris throws a quick glance at a dark corner to the left of his dad's desk. From there Stiles can make out the faint glow of turquoise blue eyes. Oh. Chris looks back at Stiles with a shrug. 

“It took a lot out of him too”, he says. “I assume. He hasn’t talked since you guys- came back.”

Chris surveys his work, deems it good enough, and leaves to check on Lydia. Stiles feels a bit woozy still, but his mind is sharper, clearer than it’s been in days. Now that he knows Derek is there, he can hear his steady, loud breaths in the quiet room. 

Since Derek clearly won’t budge, Stiles will go to him. It takes four tries, but he manages an awkward but sturdy standing up. He walks on bambi legs over to the desk, crouches down with great difficulty to Derek’s level. His legs are clearly not happy about this, so he lets his weight slump backward and sits down cross-legged on the floor. He figures he’s going to be down here long enough.

He starts reaching a hand out to Derek, but hesitates. It might get bitten off. He’s not sure how gone Derek is. Instead, he tries something simple.

“Derek?” he calls, croaky but steady.

No response, but the blue lights get a little more intense for a second. Uh. Not too bad. Okay.

“Hey buddy”, he tries again. “You’re okay. You can come back. We’re fine. The Nemeton is dead.” 

Deaton drained it from its energy at the end of senior year. Derek wasn’t around then, but Stiles can hope Scott passed on this very important piece of information when he came back. Stiles scratches at his scalp, just above the cuts on his neck, where it itches most. 

“You brought me back”, he keeps going. “Lydia’s ok. We’re fine. You did it.”

He reaches out a hand then, mostly because he’s always had a problem with impulse control. He stops half an inch away from Derek’s face, but he can’t help his own curiosity. He touches the protruding ridge there, explores the weirdness of Derek’s beta face with his fingers.

“Where do they go?” he mutters to himself.

Stiles feels the puff of breath on his extended wrist as Derek huffs, and there’s coarse, bushy hair under Stiles fingers. Derek’s eyebrows have returned! Celebrations in all the land and all that. Stiles should take his fingers away. 

As he does so, unclawed fingers come up to circle his wrist, holding his hand close. Derek’s usual green-blue-golden-what-color-is-this-even eyes bore into Stiles’.

“Thanks.” 

Derek’s voice is a little hoarse, but definitely un-growly. He lets Stiles’ hand go.

Stiles flaps it at him in an “it’s nothing” gesture. 

“No dude”, he says, “thank  _ you _ .” He looks at his crossed feet, his sneakers caked in dirt. “You know. For bringing me back.

“You’re welcome”, Derek answers, looking at his own shoes.

They stay there for another minute or two, as Stiles’ limbs reacquaint themselves with one another and Derek lets his whole body unlock, one knot of nerves after the other. 

Derek is the first to stand. Stiles looks up and up and up at him. Derek offers Stiles a hand. Stiles looks at the hand. Derek shuffles his feet. 

“Lydia?” he asks, awkward. 

Stiles takes his hand, lets Derek take most of his weight as he pulls him up. Derek makes sure he’s steady on his feet before stepping away. Stiles feels woozy. Probably because of  the werewolf mindmeld thing. And the getting attacked by a demon. Yeah. That must be it.

Derek sidesteps him to get to the door. That’s when Stiles remembers where they are. Right. Lydia. His dad. He follows Derek out the door.

::

Lydia is not in the break room. 

In the break room is a very dejected looking Parrish, pawing sadly at the bathroom door. 

“Is everything alright?” he’s asking, clearly not for the first time. No answer comes. Stiles has no idea what is happening, but he’s enjoying that constipated look on Parrish’s face immensely. 

When he notices them at the door, Parrish comes over to clap Derek on the shoulder, making sure he’s okay. He gives Stiles an inquisitive once-over and a nod, both of which Stiles rolls his eyes at. Before Parrish can start showering them with questions, the door opens, revealing a disgruntled Chris Argent, wiping blood off his fingers with a tissue, and a pinched Lydia. She traded her pencil skirt and heels for a pair of leggings and a large Beacon County Sheriff Station t-shirt. Her hair, piled on top of her head, reveal a neatly lined strip of band-aids on her neck, probably identical to Stiles’.

Parrish strides toward her and hugs her to him. She goes willingly, but locks eyes with Stiles behind his back. Her gaze is urgent. Almost scared. That is… not good. He feels a warm pressure on his arm, notices Derek is squeezing his elbow. He might have started swaying on his feet again. Uh.

Lydia pushes Parrish and his prying hands gently off her. She sits on the edge of the couch, still looking at Stiles. He goes over on shaky legs and sits next to her. She scooches over until their sides are touching from knee to shoulder, takes his hands in hers. Her eyes are boring holes on the side of his skull. 

Stiles looks at her for a long while. She opens her mouth then closes it a few times, like she’s not sure where to begin. He looks around the room. Derek has slumped into a plastic chair at the table. Chris is crouched over a large, black, shady-as-fuck canvas bag, methodically reordering its content. Stiles ignores the occasional clinks and clangs. Parrish is perched on a seat at the very edge of the room, looking ready to spring if Lydia so much as looks in his direction. That poor dude, Stiles thinks. So whipped.

“I saw your dad.” 

Stiles startles out of his thoughts. Man, Lydia does  _ not _ beat around the bush. He looks back at her. Lydia’s voice is clear and sure, but her eyes are pleading with Stiles : please be okay with this. Like Stiles has a choice. He squeezes her hand. She smiles at him, tight. Lets out a breath slowly through her pursed lips. 

“Whatever she did to you, it left some traces. Strong, powerful traces”, she says, worried. Stiles should probably be worried too. But it’s not the first possibly demonic thing to play around with Stiles’ mind. Frankly, it’s getting old. He could have been possessed by, like, a powerful witch or a cool vampire. Or Judy Garland’s spirit. But no, he gets the demon. Again.

“The link she created between you and her is still open, and pretty solid. We’ll have to be very careful, that she doesn’t try and-” Lydia stops in her tracks.

“And what?” Derek asks. “Try and do what?”

Lydia frowns. “I don’t know. I’m… not sure.”

A chill goes down Stiles’ spine. Yeah. He’s worried now.

Lydia squeezes his hand again. He looks up at her. 

“I barely had to push through your connection to get to her thoughts. I found your dad almost instantly. She has him, I’m sure. She’s… keeping him.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Stiles asks.

Lydia stares at him, irritated. 

“I’m not sure, Stiles”, she snaps. “I’m still fairly new to this, perusing into the inner workings of a  _ demon _ . It was pretty hard not to lose my frickin’  _ mind _ in there-”

Stiles is an ass. He opens his arms. Lydia slumps into him, going from pissed to exhausted in 0.1 seconds. He uses the soothing voice he knows for a fact Lydia hates. 

“I’m sorry, Lyds. I’m sorry. Thank you, for doing this. I’m an ass.”

“You are”, she answers, small and muffled in Stiles’ shoulder. She stays there a handful more seconds, then straightens up, brushing stray strands of hair off her face.

“As I was saying” - quick reproachful glance at Stiles - “she’s keeping him. In a place of her own making. It doesn’t feel… physical.”

“Like in another dimension?” Parrish asks, of all people.

Lydia rolls the idea around in her brain for a while, clearly uncomfortable with diving this far into the crazy.

“Possibly.” She shrugs. “Kind of.” She makes a face. “Yes.”

Stiles might need to lie down. From the look on Derek’s face, he might too.

“Did you see other people there?” Parrish asks again. “Other victims? Like, Gerard, or-”

“Gerard’s dead”, Lydia interrupts. 

The room goes eerily silent as everyone stops moving. 

“I saw it.” Lydia looks at Chris, right into his eyes. “He was… he was him, then something less, then almost nothing.” She swallows. “Then nothing.” She looks at all of them, at a loss. “That’s what she does, she- she feeds on people. Their energy, their life force. Until they fade out of existence.”

“A demon. I’m positive”, Chris agrees, with more aplomb than anyone learning their father is dead should be able to display. He stands up from his crouch over his bag, plants his feet and crosses his arms. A defensive pose. “Gerard probably thought she was just a human. You say she posed as a shy deputy?” he asks Derek, all business. 

Derek nods. 

“He might have planned to prey on that”, Chris says, thoughtful, “use her to make a kanima.” He scratches at his beard, deep in thought, like he’s following tracks laid out just for him by a mysterious creature. “Probably get Scott to bite her by using Melissa as leverage some way or other.” Chris sighs harshly. “Obviously, he didn’t see it coming when she turned on him.” 

“That might be…” Derek trails off when every head in the room swivels toward him. Chris raises his eyebrows at him questioningly. “That might be how the Sheriff came up on her”, Derek continues hesitantly. 

Stiles’ gulp is audible in the small, cramped room. Derek glances at him quickly before looking at Chris. 

“Gerard disappeared about a year ago, yeah?” Derek asks Chris. 

Chris’s nod is short and perfunctory. These two are obviously quite used to working together.

“Melissa told us the Sheriff was keeping an eye on Gerard, after he was seen hanging around her house and Scott’s…” Derek lets that hang in the air for a while. “Then Gerard disappeared, right around the time…” He looks at Stiles again, almost sheepish. “... right around the time Jenna and I were hired.”

Stiles feels like something very large and heavy just landed on his chest. And his shoulders. And his head. His blood runs cold. He thought that was just a figure of speech, but clearly it isn’t.

Lydia breaks the heavy silence. “Are you saying… John - the Sheriff - has been under her- influence… the whole time she was here?”

Derek looks at Stiles. He must find nothing there because Stiles can’t feel his face. Derek looks at Chris, who nods.

“Yes. It’s very likely”, Derek answers without breaking eye contact.

Everyone gets lost in the enormity of what Derek just shared. It’s so fucking impossible. But it makes sense. A sick, twisted, fucked up sort of sense. Fuck… all this time. All these phone calls and Skype calls and the accident and Stiles never saw it coming. Fuck.

“But we had dinner with her last Sunday…” Parrish mutters, seemingly lost in thought. In the same second, Stiles is on his feet across the room raising his fist to punch his face clean off his body. Then Derek’s hands are restraining his arms. He’s using werewolf strength, the _ traitor,  _ and-

“Stiles!” 

Lydia’s voice breaks through his haze of fury. He takes stock of where he is, breathing slowly. Derek is holding him flush against his own body, restraining him. Chris is at Derek’s shoulder, ready to intervene, though in the human or the shifter’s favor, nobody knows. Lydia is in front of him, blocking passage to Parrish, who’s had the decency to scramble back and up. He’s at the door, hand on the doorknob, ready to flee.

Lydia looks at Parrish, snaps at him to go. Parrish does. Lydia turns back to Stiles. She observes him, then slowly puts her hands on his shoulders. Derek steps back and Stiles sways a bit in place, again. Lydia looks for his eyes. 

“Okay?”, she asks in a small voice, just for the two of them.

Stiles nods, breathes and breathes and breathes. He tries a huff, then tries his voice. Rough, always so fucking rough. 

“I don’t know what happened. I mean, I don’t like the guy, sure, but this…”

“You punched him once before”, Derek cuts in.

Stiles turns his head to roll his eyes at him. It doesn’t qualify for any other kind of answer.

Lydia pushes him back toward the couch by the shoulders. “It didn’t  _ feel _ like you, though”, she says once he’s sitting down. “You were on him so fast…”

“It was probably the demon’s influence on him”, Chris says like he can’t keep his ominous one-liner inside for a second more. This guy speaks like he’s constantly waiting for dramatic music to underline his statements. It gets tiring. But Stiles sees why he and Derek get along. 

Lydia sits down next to Stiles, keeping her hands on him. It feels good. It feels like sanity in a confusing whirlwind of crazy. She cocks his head to the side, considers it. “Yes, probably.” She looks at Stiles questioningly.

Fuck if he knows. Everything that happened this past week feels like a dream. He hasn’t been able to truly feel his hands or his face for days. His back hurts like he’s been running marathon after marathon. He has to coach himself to breathe relentlessly. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know if he’s himself, or someone else, or a pod person. 

He looks at his hands, at his hoodie sleeves, chewed beyond salvation. Fuck, this hoodie isn’t even  _ his _ . He looks up, at Lydia, at Chris, at Derek. They’re all looking back. He feels really small. Really alone. He breathes and chews on his ruined sleeve and stays silent. He doesn’t know.

Derek sighs, long and hard, filling the room. He falls into the chair closest to the couch, the one he was in before Stiles’ outburst. His taps his foot on the floor in quick impatient taps, ruffles his beard and his hair with his hands. He’s tired, exhausted, frustrated. He’s Derek. Stiles can count on him to be that, at least.

“Tell us everything you know about demons”, Derek says to Chris.

Chris sits in the last available chair, letting his body hit the plastic hard. He rubs his face with both hands a few times, sighs long and hard. When he straightens up, he has gone into Lecture Mode.

“There are many kinds of demons. The most common kind, though, what we usually call demons, are dark beings who survive and thrive by feeding on humans. They take them, suck the life out of them until they just… disappear. There’s records of tens of thousands of them in the dark ages, but nowadays they’re pretty much believed to be extinct.”

He looks squarely at Stiles. “It is said they like to take on human form to stay close to their victim and control them at their whim. They can scramble the minds of people they are close to. Confuse them to throw them off their tracks.” A commiserating look at Derek. 

Derek hunches his shoulders. He probably thinks this is his fault, that he didn’t sniff out the demon when he had more than a year to do so. He might even blame himself for Gerard’s… death? disappearance? obliteration? Derek Hale the martyr.

“She - it- probably tried to control you at the house.” Chris goes on. “That’s how it’s still linked to you. She might try to control you, still. Or try to see through your eyes. I don’t really have specifics on how it works.”

Stiles speaks up then, because this is just Too Much tension to take on. “Welp. That’s some serious Voldemort shit right there.”

Lydia snorts loudly, then slaps at his shoulder, embarrassed by her own nervous outburst. Chris steadily ignores them.

“There’s also records of them taking on certain attributes from the humans they feed on. That’s how you heard her speak with your dad’s voice, I think. Anything else you might have noticed?” Chris asks.

Stiles thinks and thinks and- 

“She came up to check on me, the other day”, he says with a small voice. “That might have been… my dad’s protectiveness showing through? I just thought Derek had asked her to.” 

Derek looks at him, surprised. Stiles looks back, shrugs. 

Chris nods at them both, unfazed. “Yes, that would make sense. That might also be why she didn’t kill you on sight, at the house.”

_ Well _ . Chris Argent knows just how to make a guy feel good. He probably turned green, because Lydia’s hands are back on his shoulder, squeezing, keeping him alive and present.

Lydia turns the full intensity of her gaze on Chris, crosses her legs. She means business. Stiles hopes Chris is shitting his pants, a little. 

“Can you tell us how to save the Sheriff?” she asks in her precise, bone-chilling voice.

Chris raises one eyebrow, pauses. Probably waiting for the music to swell in his head. “You’ll need to kill it.”

In perfect sync, Lydia and Stiles roll their eyes. 

“No shit”, Lydia says, all high, breathy tone and venom. “Can you tell us  _ how _ to kill it?”

Chris honest to God smirks. Stiles feels the need to bludgeon him with a plastic spork arise. It has nothing to do with the demon, this time. Even Derek seems to roll his shoulders in irritation.

“I might know some ways, yes.”  _ Dun dun duuuunnn _ . Stiles imagines it’s the noise Chris hears in his head anyway.

::

A shadow hovers over Stiles, a hand reaching out to grab him. He grips the wrist attached to the hand fiercely, trying to stop its lethal advance but- 

“Stiles.”

Oh. It’s just Derek. He turns on his side, his nose burying itself in Lydia’s curls, still sleeping soundly, body tucked into his. They’re on the same couch in the break room. Derek is hovering awkwardly over them, holding… a blanket. Oh. Soft-hearted fucker. 

Stiles burrows further into Lydia’s hair, realizes he’s still holding on to Derek’s wrist. He detaches his fingers one by one.

“Go on”, he tells him, as he lets his eyes close. A beat, then the blanket is being draped over them both. Mmh. They must have fallen asleep while Chris Argent was droning on and on and  _ on _ about fire and witches and silver and whatever the hell else.

Stiles knew he was supposed to be paying close attention, but his eyelids drooped until they were pulled close, almost against his will. Lydia must have tucked herself into him when they finished talking. She must have been exhausted by the mindmeld thing. Thinking of it, it’s kind of a miracle Derek is still up. He feels himself drown into sleep once more. 

“G’night, Derek”, he murmurs.

From above him, he hears a throat being cleared, then a soft “goodnight, Stiles”. Then he’s asleep again.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize in advance for the Les Mis reference in the first paragraph
> 
> also yes, they do drink way too much coffee. I did warn about this in the tags. this is, first and foremost, a coffee fic.

Stiles wakes up to the smell of bad, burnt coffee. Lydia is still dead to the world beside him, so he extracts himself from the couch with great acrobatic prowess. He sticks the landing, waits for the jury to afford him all tens, accepts his Gold Medal with humility, then staggers toward coffee like a starving man toward warm bread. When it comes to coffee, call him Jean Valjean. 

There’s another blanket folded on a chair close to the door, so Stiles drapes it over himself, burrito style. He toddles over to the door, opens it to reveal the blessed sight of the coffee machine. And Derek.

Frumpy, crumpled, messy Derek. Stiles feels a wave of something warm overtake him. Pity, probably. Empathy, possibly.

He pads over to him, makes a “ahem” noise as he gets close. Derek honest to god  _ jumps _ two feet into the air, spilling the coffee cup he was holding all over the floor. Stiles wants to laugh for hours on end, but he’s also, kind of, worried. You don’t take Derek Hale by surprise. Certainly not by  _ walking over _ to him. 

“You sleep okay?” 

Derek makes a grunting noise as he bends over, quickly wiping the coffee he spilled with a paper towel.

Stiles frowns. “You sleep at all?”

Derek stands up. It takes him a few tries to stand totally upright. He snorts, in a very un-Derek-like way. His eyes are unfocused. 

“Stayed up with Chris”, he grunts. “Research.”

“Oh-kay. Found anything we can use?”

Derek reaches for the machine, starts pouring more ground coffee into the cup thingy. A lot of coffee. Too much coffee. Stiles knocks his shoulder with his own gently, takes over for him. 

Derek huffs, small. “Not really. More research to do. Today.”

They’re silent, watching the coffee drip into the awaiting pot. It’s easy, this sleepy silence. Comfortable, like the blanket Stiles has wrapped around him. 

When the coffee’s made, he hands a full cup of black coffee to Derek, making eye contact. When he’s sure Derek won’t drop it, he turns away, makes his own. After a few seconds of silent, blissful sipping, Derek says “oh!” and stumbles to his desk. He comes back to Stiles’ furrowed brow, a phone in hand.  _ Stiles _ ’ phone in hand. 

“I found it”, Derek explains. “At the house.” He hands it to Stiles, shrugs awkwardly. “I charged it for you.” 

Stiles thumbs through the screen quickly, see dozens of Facebook and text notifications he erases without reading. As he looks through his missed calls, Derek pipes up again. 

“He called.” Stiles looks at him in question. Derek faces seems to try to do two things at once. If Stiles had to guess, it would be awkward embarrassment and poker face. The result looks sleep-deprived and vaguely constipated. “Andy. He called.”

Stiles gestures for more with the hand holding the phone. Derek is looking slightly to the left of it.

“... and?” Stiles prompts.

Derek startles from his zombie state. “Oh! He called, when you were still… out. From the attack”, he tacks on. 

Stiles has been out because of a number of things in the past few days. He appreciates the reminder. He snaps his fingers in Derek’s face to get him to continue, receives a couple of outraged looks from officers around them.

“I picked up”, Derek adds. 

Stiles is about to start yelling. Derek puts a hand up in his face to stop him.

“You were- injured”, he defends. “I thought he ought to know.” 

Stiles shuts his mouth. Derek has a point.

“If it were me”, Derek keeps grumbling in his coffee like a chastised kid, lost to the world, “I’d want to know if you were injured, anyway.” 

Stiles shakes his head. The man is clearly delirious with sleep deprivation. He snaps his fingers again. 

“It’s fine, Derek”, Stiles says. “What did he say? What did  _ you _ say?”

Derek fixes him with a very annoyed look. His eyebrows are all pouty. It’s adorable. And annoying. 

“‘M not a total moron. I said you fell down the stairs, you had a mild concussion. I said you’re fine.” 

Stiles breathes deeply once, twice.

“He offered to come”, Derek goes on. The floor is rubber under Stiles shoes. “- but I said no. I said to talk with you first.” 

Stiles breathes and drinks his coffee and breathes.

“I wasn’t sure if was what you wanted”, Derek adds, talking to his coffee again.

Stiles drinks more coffee, but his cup is empty. Sad. He keeps his eyes trained on it, brow furrowed. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Derek’s jaw tighten, a vein popping in his neck. He furrows his brow even more.

“Is it? What you want?” Derek asks him, fiddling with his coffee cup.

Stiles needs more coffee. He’s too warm. He tightens his hands in the blanket covering him anyway.

“I… don’t know.” He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what to do about Andy’s worry and he doesn’t know why he’s having this conversation with Derek. “I’ll call him. Later.”

He sees Derek nod, once. Then a hand extends directly into his line of vision. He looks at it, then at Derek’s face. His eyebrows are telling Stiles not to be an idiot.  _ Oh _ . Stiles puts his empty coffee cup into Derek’s hand. Satisfied, Derek steps forward to the coffee machine, gets them refills.

Stiles should really ditch the blanket. He’s definitely too warm.

::

Lydia wakes up soon after, just as Stiles is running out of reasons not to call Andy. Too early. Too tired. Too messy. Not enough energy to lie to his partner, again, to pretend like he’s fine, again, to not feel smothered by his worry, again. Stiles is the worst boyfriend in the world and he doesn’t deserve someone good and smart and not a total mess like Andy.

He’s stewing in self-hate when Lydia comes out of the bathroom looking put together and flawless. Stiles eyeballs her. She notices. 

“What?”, she asks, defensive.

Stiles has no words. After a week sleeping at the station, he’s pretty sure he looks like a fifty-seven year old homeless junkie. That’s about what he smells like anyway. Lydia must think as much because she wrinkles her nose as she gets close. 

“You need a shower.”

Stiles thinks about being offended, just for the sake of it. But he does, he really does. Parrish strolls into the station then, all perfect and clean in his ironed uniform. Stiles thinks about hitting him again. No help from malicious spirits required. 

He reaches them, eyes Stiles with a bit of trepidation. Kisses Lydia’s cheek quickly. Gross. Then he’s in cop mode, outlining the plan. 

“So. Derek called me last night, he caught me up. There’s still some research to be done on” - he lowers his voice, leans forward -“ways to kill her. It. Sorry.” He shuffles his feet a bit, clears his throat. “So we thought we’d meet at the house with Chris to keep researching and plan. It’s less- conspicuous than here.” 

Lydia is nodding but Stiles is not sure he understands what’s happening. 

“What house?” he asks.

Parrish is trying really hard to not sound placating. “The Sheriff’s house. Your- your dad’s house.” 

No. “No.” 

There you go. It’s out there. Stiles won’t. He won’t go back to that house until the evil creature chick is dead and burned and his dad is back safe and falling asleep on the couch watching reruns of CSI. He says it again for emphasis. 

“No.” Shakes his head, to make sure everyone is on the same page. No.

Lydia starts trying to argue but Stiles says “no”, repeats it again and again like a mantra. He starts in on the right sleeve of his hoodie, chewing on the green cotton methodically. He doesn’t look at them, at their commiserating faces. He searches the open floor of desks. 

“Where’s Derek?”

Parrish grimaces, shuffles his feet, brushes imaginary lint off his breast pocket. “He went home to change. Took a few days off to concentrate on research. He’ll meet us at the house.”  

Stiles shakes his head, says nothing. No.

“Look, it’s the easiest place to meet”, Parrish pleads. “And-” he glances at Lydia. They share a knowing look. Parrish sighs. “The place is probably still charged with her energy. Lydia might be able to” - he gestures in a way that’s supposed to signify magic banshee powers, which Lydia elegantly rolls her eyes at - “ _ feel _ something. Maybe feel out the connection to your dad more efficiently?”

Well. Stiles thinks of saying no and shaking his head again. But. They’re right, and he’s had two cups of coffee. He’s exhausted and sore and gross and he knows they will get their way eventually.

Lydia reaches up, touches his shoulder. “Also, you will be able to take a shower. Or two. Change. Shave.”

The cold, wet cotton thread of his sleeve creaks against his bottom teeth. He sighs through his mouth, briefly heating up the wet mess he’s still chewing on. 

“Fine.” He grips Lydia’s hand, still on his shoulder. “But you’re not leaving me alone for a second in there. Deal?” 

Lydia looks at him, gives him a thin smile. “Deal.”

::

Stiles wasn’t kidding about not being left alone. H e makes Lydia sit on the bathroom counter while he takes a shower. She pages through one of the old, leather-bound hunter journals Chris brought with him while Stiles lets hot water beat him into human shape.

When they finally exit the bathroom in a billowing cloud of steam, Chris and Parrish are piling up books and maps and weapons of all kinds on the dinner table. Derek lets himself in through the front door, looking a bit more rested in a soft grey sweater and dark jeans. He’s carrying three pizza boxes. Stiles feels the strange pressing need to get down on one knee and propose marriage. To the pizza, obviously.

As soon as the pizza boxes have joined the books, maps and guns on the table, Stiles pounces. He’s got two slices in his mouth and a third in hand as the others watch in wonder and/or disgust. Lydia just shrugs, like she’s used to this (she is). 

“Coffee?” she asks around.

In the middle of various sounds of assents, Stiles slaps himself in the face with the slice of pizza hanging from his mouth, he’s nodding so hard. It’s worth the grease trailing down his cheek and the tomato sauce in his eye. Yes. Coffee.

Chris clears his throat, gets them to crowd next to him around the dinner table. They hunch over a map as Chris circles all of Gerard’s old hides, places where Jenna could be hiding in now. Something bumps Stiles’ right elbow: it’s one of his dad’s old BCSS mugs, full to the brim with creamy coffee, just the way Stiles likes it. Holding it out to him is Derek, who’s holding his own mug and looking at Stiles with a trace of something in his eyes. Something like… comradely affection. Yes. 

Stiles takes the coffee, nods his thanks. As he turns back to the map, Derek knocks their shoulder together. Stiles looks at the maps, the weapons, the hands stretched out over the maps pointing to this and that, the mingle of voices. The reassuring smell of coffee and Derek’s laundry detergent next to him. He’s not alone here. They’re doing this together. They might actually be able to find his dad.

They’re at it for hours, researching increasingly weirder ways to kill the demon without actually doing a virgin sacrifice or summoning Lucifer. All the books and hunter journals and pack contacts tell them roughly the same thing: they need to access the plane of existence where Jena, the demon, whatever, actually lives to be able to kill it. The only way to do that, that they might have access to, are Lydia’s banshee powers. When Chris reluctantly mentions that option, Lydia blanches. So, even though Lydia would do anything for the Sheriff, they keep looking. 

They peruse old, dusty, creepy books and make intercontinental phone calls and decipher dead languages and hack supernatural forums and argue about the actual existence of witches and the literal depiction of hell as night slowly falls over them. Stiles’ feet are tingling, his back hurts. His head is going to explode if he has to read one more sentence on the mythical creature known as a kanima…. He has to look at his reflection in the glass window from time to time, to make sure he didn’t shrink back to his sixteen year old self. It’s weird and scary. And exhilarating in a way.

Lydia keeps him fed and hydrated and upright, while also expertly translating passages from the archaic Latin and German books Parrish has open in from of him. Derek and Chris alternate between making phone calls to their respective allies and connections, and discussing the subsequent leads between themselves in short sentences and hushed tones.

“Wait”, Parrish pipes up, reading from one of the dozen books lying in a semi-circle around him, sitting cross-legged on the floor. “In this one they say you can access other planes of consciousness by submerging your body into a tub of ice water. Maybe we can do that? Use the, uh, connection Stiles has to her that way? Would that be possible?” 

They’re silent for a bit, exchanging looks. Lydia cocks her head toward Parrish, in a “oh, honey” way. While Lydia explains to Parrish why that is a very very bad idea, and how exactly she knows that, in what Stiles presumes are small, easy-to-understand words, he catches Derek looking at him. He looks back. 

There’s an understanding there. Maybe compassion. Nostalgia of a time that was scary and awful and so much simpler still than their life today. Stiles feels kindred with that younger Derek, the terrified alpha who desperately wanted his female beta not to be dead. He sees him now in the eyes of the older deputy. Maybe Derek is seeing mouthy, gangly, teenage Stiles through his eyes, too. 

There’s a knock at the door. Stiles never noticed the hint of gold in Derek’s eyes. Is that new? It can’t be. There’s a second knock at the door. Stiles’ brain comes back online. 

Someone is at the door. He checks everyone’s faces to find them equally frozen and dumbfounded. A third knock, more insistent, this time. 

“Scott?” Stiles mouths at Derek.

But Scott would have let himself in, or at the very least hollered Stiles’ name by then. 

“Melissa?” he mouths again. 

Derek’s brow is furrowed, nostrils flaring quickly. He doesn’t recognize the scent. Derek shakes his head. In the ringing, expectant silence of the room, Stiles distinctly hears the cock of Argent’s gun.

“What do we do?” Parrish whispers. 

Lydia looks to Stiles, imperious. “Go. Open it.” 

Stiles looks at Chris and Derek, who nod slowly. Derek’s eyebrows are still in the V of Death position, his eyes shining slightly blue, straining to identify the person on the other side of the door. Stiles lets out a long breath. 

They’re on edge, and they’re probably acting crazy. It could be anyone. It could be the mailman. At 7pm on a Saturday. Or, a pizza delivery. Yeah. They’re acting crazy. He steps toward the door, Chris and Derek falling back behind him, each at one of his shoulders. 

He slowly flips the lock open, takes a deep breath. Then he throws it open, poised for a fight. Derek and Chris tense up behind him. 

Andy’s standing in the middle of the porchlight beam, fist raised in the air mid-knock, eyes as big as saucers. 


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it was really hard to finish this chapter, but here it is...  
> I hope I made you care enough about Andy that this won't be boring as fuck to read. :/
> 
> thank you for your comments !! <3

Andy. Andy!

“Andy!”, Stiles nearly shouts, voice cracking as he makes the name last a few vowels longer. 

Andy drops his hand to his sides. Stiles takes in the duffel bag at his shoulder, the five o’clock shadow on his jaw and the dark circles under his eyes. His mouth is open in a soft “oh”, and he’s looking about ready to bolt in the opposite direction. Which. Um. 

Stiles looks over his shoulder and finds Chris Argent pointing a gun right at his boyfriend’s chest. But that’s not the worst. The worst is Derek sporting total wolfy face, complete with fangs, sideburns and shiny blue eyes, snarling. Stiles turns around and takes a slow step back, putting himself between Andy and the two men.

He snaps his fingers in front of his own face, trying to get their attention off his increasingly startled boyfriend. 

“Guys”, he calls. No reaction. “Guys!” 

Chris shifts his gaze to him, gun unwavering. God fucking dammit. 

“So, this is Andy”, Stiles says in a strangled, squeaky voice. He steps to the side, pointing to Andy with his hand, who’s looking at Stiles like he grew three heads. “My boyfriend from Boston. Who I live with. My boyfriend.” To emphasize his point and get the other two to react, he laces their fingers together. Andy’s hand is cold in his.

Time is frozen. Stiles counts the beats of his heart. Is this really happening? He’d pinch himself, but then he might wake up from this nightmare, and who knows what kind of fucked up reality would be waiting for him on the other side?

Finally, Lydia peers through the open door, standing on her tiptoes between Chris and Derek. She takes in the entire situation: Chris and Derek still in fight mode, Stiles standing stiff in front of a deeply shocked Andy. She shoulders between the two men, stands in front of them, her hands on her hips, head cocked to the side, hair artfully draped over one shoulder. She slowly lifts an eyebrow.

“Oh, Andy, hi!” she says, tone casual and detached. Stiles could marry her on the spot. “Please, come in.”

Just like that, the hurricane dissolves. Lydia turns around and pushes at Derek and Chris’ shoulders until they acknowledge her and move back toward the living room. Stiles lets out all of the air in his lungs as Andy unfreezes. He follows Lydia into the house, dragging Stiles along by their linked hands. He looks at everything with startled, almost frightened eyes. 

“What the-”, Andy stutters. “How? Who-”

Stiles is powerless to answer.

Lydia, still strutting around like she’s entertaining important guests in her stylish Boston condo, sits Andy down on the couch, snaps her fingers at Parrish until he brings her a mug of steaming black coffee. Andy doesn’t like coffee, Stiles should tell them. As soon as the mug is in his hands though, he downs it in big, greedy gulps. The scalding coffee makes him cough. 

Stiles sits down on the coffee table facing Andy. He pets his knees, his hands, his face, whispering his name over and over again, until Andy’s eyes meet his. Tears stream down his face from the burning in his throat. 

Lydia, standing next to the couch, gives Stiles a long, searching look. She turns to the three men standing awkwardly in the room, gives them a “begone” look that inspires fear in more seasoned men. The four of them hurry toward the stairs. Lydia will have them work on the plan in the study. Derek will still be able to hear them, but Stiles is thankful for the illusion of privacy, at least. 

When the door to the study closes with a click and the only noise in the room is Andy’s labored, unsteady breath, Stiles slides from the coffee table to the couch. He settles next to Andy, their knees touching. Andy looks at him, eyes full of questions. Stiles looks back. He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know where to start. He’s still not sure this is real life.

Stiles reaches for Andy’s hand, grips it.

“You’re here!” he whispers.

Andy nods, clears his throat a few times. He wipes at his tears with the heel of his palm. Then he’s composed and his eyes are searching and kind and he’s Andy. Stiles stares.

“Yeah, I’m here”, he echoes.

He looks around slowly, at the living room, the tired wallpaper, the lumpy armchairs, the shelves with Stiles’ comic books. It hits Stiles then: Andy has never been here. This house where Stiles grew up, where his father lives, where his mother’s touch is everywhere still. This house that’s a part of Stiles, this town, this life. Andy doesn’t know it. And he’s dying to know. He wants to be here.

Andy’s eyes settle on Stiles again. “I got your dad’s address off Google”, he explains. “I tried to call, but. It went to voicemail, every time.”

“Oh.” Stiles wiggles around, takes his phone out of his jeans’ back pocket. The screen is black. Lydia powered it down earlier, she was so sick of Stiles looking at it like it was going to explode. He shows it to Andy, apologetic. 

Andy shrugs, avoids his gaze. “Figures.”

Silence stretches between them. Stiles is at a loss for words. He takes a moment to really look at Andy. He seems tired, eyes sunken, beard scraggly. He looks good too: perfect salt and pepper hair, square jaw, clear eyes. The embodiment of the sexy lit professor fantasy. Stiles is hopelessly fond and hopelessly guilty. 

He fidgets, grips Andy’s hand tighter. He waits and waits and waits for him to say something, anything. To yell. To cry. To throw things. To kiss him senseless.  _ Something _ .

Andy doesn’t yell or cry or throws things. He fixes Stiles with his no-bullshit professor look, the one that made many freshmen cry and/or swoon.

“What the hell, Stiles?” he asks.

Well. That’s a really good question. What the hell.

He’s not finished apparently. “You haven’t been answering my calls, at all. You’ve been- here, and you- So I came here, to see you. I thought, maybe that’s what you wanted. You’re always nagging me to be more- spontaneous, to make the first move.” He drags a hand through his hair. “I thought, maybe if I came here, you would let me in. But then, I- you- what the hell?”

Stiles is nodding and has been nodding because yes, what the hell, yes, he’s been wanting for Andy to be more present, to make the first move, to be there for him, and he came, and what the hell, yes.

Andy looks at him, something pleading in his eyes. Andy never asks for anything. He tells Stiles where they’re going on dates, and what he expects from him in terms of behavior at functions and dinners with friends. He negotiates with Stiles on the amount of vegetables contained in a meal and who will clean the bathroom. He never asks, never begs. But his eyes, now. 

Stiles lets his breath hiss through his teeth. He slumps on the sofa, uses his grip on Andy’s hand to make him slump, too. He wiggles around until his head is on Andy’s shoulder and their entwined hands are on his lap. He clears his throat, but doesn’t speak. Andy’s a patient man, he’ll let Stiles find his words.

“Thank you for coming”, he settles on, first.

Andy lifts the shoulder Stiles’ head is resting on in a shrug. 

“I would have been here much earlier”, he says, resentful.

Stiles pats Andy’s knee with his free hand. “I know”, he answers, lackluster.

Andy turns his head toward Stiles, kisses his hair. “Will you tell me what’s going on?” he whispers.

No, Stiles won’t. He doesn’t want to, and he’s not even sure he could. There’s too much, it’s too complicated, it’s fucking unreal. Andy wouldn’t even believe him if he tried the truth. 

But Andy’s here, solid next to him, and Stiles has never thought this would happen. He doesn’t want to lie anymore. And he can’t evade this conversation, it’s a thing that needs to happen. As sure as Scott was meant to fall in love with Allison and Stiles was meant to become a teenage werewolf’s sidekick. The elements have conspired, the stars have aligned in just the right way. Stiles Stilinski will be confronted by his boyfriend about who he is, who he really is, right now.

So he does what he needs to do and tries very hard not to float away from his own body or hyperventilate as he tells Andy about looking for half a body in the woods and Scott being bitten and hunters and Alphas and dead tree stumps and Japanese malicious spirits and the Argents and fucking kanimas. 

He tries to stay present and grips Andy’s hand so hard his bones creak as he tells him about his father in a hotel bed, not making sense, and getting a phone call from Parrish in the middle of the night and punching him and trying to remember to breathe and Chris and Lydia and darkness and a demon and hours buried in the dark net of supernatural communities surrounded by the smell of old leather books and sleeping on sofas and destroying all of his hoodies.

Eventually he runs out of breath and Andy stays silent, just holds him through his panic attack, soothing him just like he’s done a hundred times in the middle of the night after Stiles had a nightmare. Stiles can’t stop thinking: now he knows what the nightmares were about.

An hour or a decade or a minute later, Stiles lets go of Andy’s bruised hand. He sits up, uses the bottom of his hoodie to wipe tears and snot away from his face. He turns on the couch, faces Andy as much as he can. 

Andy looks… shocked. Disbelieving. Like he was hit by a freight train.

“More coffee?” Stiles asks, sorting through the gravel in his voice.

Andy nods, a bit frantic. Stiles gets to the kitchen, busies himself with making a new pot. He bared his secrets to the person he’s been living with for the last six years, his partner for all intents and purposes, and he doesn’t know what stable ground feels like anymore. He doesn’t know if he wants Andy to believe him, or ask questions, or run away, or accept him fully, no matter what. He doesn’t know if he wants his motives questioned, or absolution, or reassurance. He doesn’t know where Andy fits in all this now.

He brings Andy a mug full of black coffee, packets of sugar and milk in his hoodie pocket, because he has no idea how Andy takes his coffee. Because he doesn’t drink coffee. This is unprecedented. He watches Andy sip at his mug, making disgusted faces. Everything has changed now.

After a while, Andy puts his mug down on the coffee table, looks up at Stiles. He taps the cushion next to him. Stiles steps over him awkwardly, sits down on the edge of the couch. Andy looks at him. He’s got the edge of a smile on his face. A smile that wants to dismiss everything Stiles said, make it a bad joke, a nightmare, something unpleasant and easily washed away. Stiles, for want of two whole sleeves, chews on the string of his hood.

“Why didn’t you tell me, before?” Andy finally, finally asks.

Stiles chews. “Would you have believed me?” 

Andy thinks for a while. He shrugs. 

Fair enough.

“Do you believe me now?” Stiles can’t help asking.

Andy sighs, deflating like a balloon. His shoulders hit the back of the couch with a thud. He reaches for Stiles’ hand but doesn’t take it.

“I mean… demons, and werewolves, and people with crossbows, and you in the middle of them?”, Andy says, disbelieving. “And, what was it, the thing with the venom and the tail? Ka- kamina?”

Stiles resists the urge to roll his eyes.

“It seems... fucking crazy”, Andy huffs around a nervous laugh. His perfect hair is in disarray. His usual grey button-down is rumpled. He’s wearing one of Stiles’ more sensible hoodies.

“But that guy, earlier”, he adds as he looks intensely into Stiles’ eyes. “Had  _ fangs _ . His eyes  _ glowed _ . And his eyebrows fucking  _ disappeared _ ! And the scary guy next to him, that was one of those, a hunter, right? One of the scary family ones, yeah?” 

Andy takes Stiles’ hand this time, holds on to it.  “I believe you.”

Stiles’ lungs constrict in his chest for half a second.

“It’s all fucking insane”, he continues, “but so are you, and I believe you.” He squeezes Stiles’ hand. “I wish you’d have trusted me with all this, much earlier. But I understand.”

Stiles wants to weep. He doesn’t deserve such a man. Andy smiles at him, small and reassuring, wipes the budding tears at the corner of his eyes. They hug, fierce, like a long-forgotten home.

“So, what’s the plan to save your dad?” Andy asks when they break apart.

Stiles’ brain skips like a filed CD. He looks at Andy, his disheveled state, the tired lines around his eyes, an inviting smile on his lips. Andy: handsome, understanding, brave.

“You mean, you want to help?” Stiles asks, needing words to be spoken.

Andy shrugs, looks around the room, all rallying energy and charm. 

“I’m not sure what I can really  _ do _ , I mean, I’m not a werewolf” - he bloody fucking  _ winks _ at Stiles, what even is happening - “but I’m willing to help in any way I can, yeah.”

Stiles is stunned, capital S. In his wildest dreams, he never, ever expected this to happen. Andy, knowing this side of him, of his life, Andy willing to discover it, to be  _ part _ of it. This is… outside of Stiles’ computing abilities. He doesn’t- he can’t-

He breathes through his nose and chews on the other end of the string not yet tacky with saliva. He wrings his hands together and looks at the faded picture of his parent’s, squinty eyed and smiling at the camera, blurry Empire State Building in the background, that’s hung on the wall behind Andy’s head.  

“Oh, okay, sure.” He gets up. Pacing might help. “It’s just”, he continues, “I’m not sure-”

But Andy’s building steam on his own now.

“I can help with research, probably!” he interrupts, pointing at the dinner table full of maps, weapons and daunting leather-bound journals. “You still need someone to go through these old books over there, no? I could-”

“Andy, listen”, Stiles all but shouts when Andy gets up and walks to the table, about to open one of Argent’s journals. 

Andy turns toward him, startled. Stiles stays put, looks at the journal’s thick, dark cover, inches from Andy’s twitching fingers. 

“I don’t-” he starts. Stops.

Andy cocks his head, impatience flickering in his expression. It makes him look like Lydia for a millisecond. Stiles is out of his depth.

“I don’t think you helping out is the best idea”, he tells Andy, cringing. “I-” He wants to offer an apology, an explanation, something, but. He’s blank. Blocked. Blubbering.

Andy crosses his arms, brows furrowed. 

“What do you mean?” he asks, because he’s an adult and he knows how to use his words.

Words have entirely failed Stiles. He opens his mouth, nothing comes out. He reaches for Andy, who thankfully closes the distance between them in two strides. He stands there, in front of Stiles, just shy of his personal space. They’re of a height. Stiles knows it, but he's struck by it again. He always thinks of Andy as taller than him.

They look into each other's eyes for a long time. Stiles is scared of blinking. He tries not to, but his eyes itch. Tears come blurring his vision.

Andy takes a step back. “Do you want me to go?” he asks, choked.

Stiles brain chooses this moment to come back online. He blinks the tears away. 

Stiles won’t lie anymore. No, he doesn’t want Andy to go, not really. Andy is reassuring and kind and a good person to have in his life. Stiles loves him. He can feel it in the way his bones strain for him under his skin. But he is not ready for Andy to see this part of his life. The scary part. He’s not ready for Andy to see this Stiles, badass, scared as shit, vulnerable and nothing-left-to-lose Stiles. And he doesn’t want to have to worry about it while he’s trying with everything he has to save his dad. And he can’t think of a nice, gentle way to tell Andy “you’re in the way”. 

And if he’s being perfectly honest, with himself at least, there’s other stuff too. Stuff that is part of his life, of who he is here, that are too important and too fragile and that he’s not ready to share or even analyze right now. Right now he needs to be Stiles Stilinski, the spazz of Beacon Hills. He needs to save his dad and he needs his friends close and his Boston life in Boston.

He looks at Andy, grips his hands, purses his lips and stays silent. The look of pure, unadulterated rejection that takes over Andy’s face just about breaks Stiles’ heart. He tastes acid on his tongue, swallows it down. He tries to be as stoic as possible. What would Derek Hale do?

Andy doesn’t shout, doesn’t cry, doesn’t act out in anger. He isn’t even petty. He smiles sadly.

“I don’t understand”, he says.

Stiles can’t speak.

Andy lets go of Stiles’ hands, clears his throat and looks directly into the beam of the overhead lamp. He breathes out a long “oof”, starts walking toward the foyer where he left his bag. 

Stiles startles into movement. “Let me… call you a cab, I-”

Andy huffs a wet sort of laugh, shakes his phone at Stiles over his shoulder. “‘S fine. Uber’s two minutes away.”

Stiles’ heart is a black hole of guilt and relief. He watches Andy’s back as he shoulders his bag, fiddles with the lock, opens the door wide. Weren’t they right there, only two minutes ago?

“I’m sorry”, Stiles manages to say with a stranger’s voice.

Andy turns around slowly. Looks him up and down, slow. He looks into Stiles’ eyes. There’s a stranger in those eyes, too. 

“I’m sorry, too”, Andy says. He turns around.

The door closes. 

Stiles is alone in his dad’s house in the dark. 

He breathes.

::

Lydia’s there. 

She hugs Stiles from behind, one of her hands on his thudding heart. 

He puts his hand on hers.


	20. Chapter 20

Stiles loses time. He puts himself in flight mode, parks himself on a chair in front of a computer, researches aggressively. He hacks into a hunters-only secure network and destroys all their entries on kanimas. But it’s not enough, there’s still ice in his chest. So he destroys the whole network, and two others like it. There. Hopefully he’s just saved the life of a few innocent shifters. 

When he surfaces, the sun is rising. He’s cold. His fingers are trembling, his wrists locked. Distantly, he hears Lydia spewing venom at someone in that high, steely voice that means she feels truly threatened. 

He gets up off his chair, back and knees popping like they’re taking tap dance classes. He walks toward the noise awkwardly. It’s coming from the kitchen.

They’re all huddled together in front of the coffee machine. Honestly, when are they not anymore? Parrish and Derek are sipping at their mugs, steering clear of Lydia’s fury, solely focused on Argent. She’s got him cornered, leaning back on the kitchen counter, hands lifted in surrender, as she leans into his personal space, poking him harshly in the chest. He doesn’t look as scared as he ought to be though. Which probably means, he knows he’s right.

“You have no idea what it took for me to-” Lydia yells at Chris. “We have no way of knowing if I’m even-”

“If you’re even what?” Stiles interrupts, poking holes in the spider webs of his voice.

They all jump. A flicker of humor illuminates Stiles’ mind for a brief second. He feels himself stir, waking up slowly from flight mode.

Lydia turns to him slowly. They scrutinize each other for a second. Stiles makes a ”go on” gesture with his hand. Lydia takes her time eviscerating Argent with her eyes. 

“Argent thinks we can use my powers to bring your dad back. And kill the demon.”

Stiles feels his eyebrows try to reach his hairline. That seems… rather simplistic. And anticlimactic. Just using Lydia’s banshee powers to get what they want? After all that research? No way.

“No way. What’s the catch?”

He makes gimme hands at the coffee machine. A few seconds later, a steaming mug is deposited into them. He sips at it. Just how he likes it. He glances at Derek, but he’s buried into his own mug.

Chris turns toward him, leaning forward on the kitchen island. Lydia next to him is trying to curse him with her mind. 

“No catch”, Chris assures. “I’ve found enough evidence that Lydia can draw your dad from the dimension he’s in using her connection to the… whatever you want to call it… netherworld? afterlife? If she can dive deep enough into her power to wake that connection… she might be able to bring your dad back with her.”

Stiles sips at his coffee, leans on the kitchen island opposite Chris.

“How will she find him?” he asks.

Argent considers his words for a second. Lydia is tapping the tip of her heel against a cupboard, tap tap tap tap. 

“You and Derek will help with that”, Chris explains. “If you guys are linked, she will be able to find your dad through your own connection with the demon… and if it comes to it, she might be able to draw on Derek’s strength to bring him back. Together, you’ll be stronger.”

“Like a pack”, Stiles adds wonderingly, without thinking. 

Catching himself, he glances at Derek, finds him looking back. Derek nods. Of course. Of course Derek would agree to the riskiest, flimsiest plan without hesitation.

“Wait!” Stiles remembers suddenly. “You explained how we would bring my dad back, but how do we kill it?”

The look that comes over Argent’s face is positively cocky. “We use your spark.” 

Stiles explodes with laughter. He has to put his mug down on the island, he’s doubled over laughing. Half of it is hysteria, the other half is sleep deprivation. His eyes are stinging and his abs hurt, but he can’t stop. 

When he runs out of air and glances up at the group, Lydia is sitting primly on the counter, smug. Parrish is patiently waiting for him to be done, staying out of the way of swinging fists. Derek looks grim. Argent is in the exact same position, drinking his coffee. His eyes are saying “dear Lord give me patience”.

Stiles wipes his face with his hoodie. Ugh, he should change. 

“You’re not serious”, he protests. “The spark thing is a gimmick Deaton invented to make me believe in my ability to use mountain ash. Everyone can do it. Everyone has a spark! It’s nothing.”

Chris squints at him, scratches at his beard. Handsome tool. 

“Everyone might have a spark”, he tells Stiles slowly, like he’s reprimanding a kindergartner. If Stiles wasn’t so out of it, he might try to use his bullshit “spark” to make him explode or something. “But you awakened it when Deaton had you lay down mountain ash.” 

Derek makes a curious noise at the back of his throat. Chris nods in his direction. Great. Tag-teamed by the Rugged and Badass Club. 

“Whether you believe it or not”, Chris adds with a flourish like a total a-hole,”there is now a spark of magic in you.” He crosses his arms like he made his point. “And we don’t even need you to know how to use it. We just need Lydia to access it, and use it to burn the demon.”

“What.”

Music to Stiles’ ears.The perfect lack of inflection makes him nostalgic. He hopes Derek never learns how to ask a question. His face must say how much he is enjoying Derek questioning Chris’ reasoning, because Argent makes a face at him.

“When the Sheriff is out of the demon’s reach”, Argent elaborates, “it won’t be able to draw power from him. Unless he finds another human to draw from immediately, for a short while, it will show its true form. That’s when it’s vulnerable.”

Stiles is forced to acquiesce. So far, what Argent’s said has aligned with what he’s found in his own research. Argent smirks, self-satisfied. Smarmy tool. 

“What can kill a demon?” he asks at large, as if he’s giving a lecture.

“The fires of hell”, Parrish answers without missing a beat. Teacher’s pet.

Chris nods, satisfied. Per-fucking-fect. Ten points to Hufflepuff, then.

“In this case”, he inclines his head toward Stiles, “the fire ignited from the magic of a spark will do.”

Stiles is eyeballing Argent so hard he can feel the strain on his eyes. He doesn’t know if he should continue arguing with him or push him or break his arm on his face. 

“Why don’t we use the, you know, literal hell hound to set fire to the demon?” Stiles counters, pointing at Parrish, his whole arm extended.

Parrish, who’s retreated into a corner of the kitchen and is holding his coffee mug like a shield, looks a tiny bit green, but otherwise just as self-sacrificing and earnest as ever. There. Perfect dude to send on a suicide mission. If he can’t kill the demon, he might just bore it to tears by trying to bring him back to the light side of the Force or whatever.

Chris frowns and shakes his head, like Stiles is the worst student he’s ever had, and like. Full offense. Stiles was an A+ student, with an inquisitive mind and insightful remarks, and only a slight attitude problem.

“Hell hounds are protectors of this world”, Chris says condescendingly. “Their fire is ineffectual on demons, because, even though they’re polar opposites, they are made from the same stuff. Hell hound fire might end up fueling the demon’s powers.”

Again, that… makes sense. Ugh.

“In other words, Parrish is completely useless”, Stiles can’t help but point out.

He lifts his head up just enough to catch the hint of a smirk at the corner of Derek’s mouth. He clears his throat.

”Are you sure?” he asks Argent, dropping the shithead act.

Chris sighs. It’s his turn to drop the act. His shoulders slump as he leans more heavily on the island. Stiles sees the weight of consecutive sleepless nights settle on his features. He scratches at his cool-guy beard. 

“As sure as I can be, which means: not at all.” Argent takes his time looking at all of them, trying to get his point across. “But it’s the only shot we have. We’ve been researching for days, and at this point, every hour counts.” 

Stiles feels a jolt of adrenaline run through him. He wants to protest, but. Fuck, he’s right.

“Okay”, Stiles says.

Lydia rears up from where she was leaning on the counter. 

“Okay? No!” she cries out.

Stiles frowns. He thought they went over this. “What? Lydia, we-”

She turns toward him, all guns blazing. “I can’t, Stiles!” she yells. “This is too much!” She leans toward him, speaking fast and urgent. “You, you know I can’t control my powers, not at this level, I-”

Stiles sighs. He’s always felt sort of powerless against Lydia’s fear of her powers. He’s not good at this. “Lydia…”

“What if I can’t?” she asks him, frantic. “What if I can’t bring your dad back, or I bring something else back?” She hugs herself, small and scared. “What if I lose myself? What if  _ you _ die? I can’t-”

Argent, because he doesn't value his life apparently, interrupts her. 

“You can learn”, he tells her, gesturing toward the dining room. “There’s enough in these journals to-”

Lydia turns on him again, all blazing fury. “You have no idea”, she says in a quiet, scary voice. “You have no idea what it took for me to get here. You don’t know how hard, how long I had to- to train, to learn control. I just-”

“Lydia.”

Parrish steps toward her, his face a blank slate of kindness and affection. He stops in front of her, takes her hands in his. He ducks his head, looks for her eyes until she looks back. 

“You can do this. You’re not alone. And I believe in you”, he says softly, lovingly.

Lydia’s eyes are suspiciously shiny.

Stiles rolls his eyes with his whole upper body, his head rolling on his shoulders. 

“Alright Romeo, settle down”, Stiles cuts in. “This is not a movie.”

He hears Derek snort to his right, spares him a glance. Then he totally bypasses Parrish’ s affronted look and focuses on Lydia. He looks at her, really looks. 

She’s wearing Parrish’s sweater over her dress, engulfing her whole body, sleeves bunched at the wrists. Most of her hair has escaped the bun at the top of her head. Some time during the night, she wiped her make-up away. She looks exhausted, small and frightened. This is bare-bones Lydia. This is “I will escape a disaffected Japanese internment camp and fight an ancient Japanese trickster spirit to bring you back” Lydia. This is his best friend.

She looks back at him, and Stiles knows she's thinking the same thing about him. He squares his shoulders, plants his feet. 

“Lydia”, he says. “You can do this because you must. We’re running out of time, we all know it.” He runs a hand through his hair, catches the knots at the base of his skull. “You’re my best friend. My dad is basically your dad, and you can save him because we’ve exhausted all other options. So you will.”

He keeps looking at her and she keeps looking back. He can only hope that she sees enough desperation and determination there to believe him.

She straightens up, chin high, and suddenly she’s Lydia Martin, genius mathematician, independent woman, high-heeled goddess who makes grown men cry when she’s bored. She gives Stiles a curt nod, cocks her hip. 

“Of course I will.”

Stiles fist-pumps the air out of sheer muscle memory, jumps over the kitchen island to hug her, picks her up at little for good measure. In the midst of all that, Lydia manages to stay poised and stoic. Stiles god damn loves her. He puts her down, kisses the top of her head, right next to where there’s a tiny, barely noticeable cowlick.

She straightens her clothes up, exacts revenge by pinching Stiles’ butt. He manfully resists a yelp.

::

They work on their flimsy excuse for a plan until well into midday, huddled together, elbow to elbow, at the dinner table. They argue over kill vs neutralize, save vs destroy. Their plan doesn’t get any more elaborate or any less scary, but Stiles feels better about it the longer they work. He feels like they might be a team, they might be able to count on each other, even Parrish and his punchable face, Chris and his badass complex, and Derek and his stupid, endearing eyebrows. They might actually make it. Or it might be the exhaustion talking.

At noon, Chris corrals them into finally, blissfully getting some real sleep. They’ll meet again that same night, and. Well. Go for it, probably. Damn. Sleep sounds really nice, right about now.

“Let’s go”, Lydia tells Parrish as Stiles is rubbing at his eyes. 

Stiles stares at her, dumbfounded. Parrish smiles at her and takes her hand, leading her to the front door. Just before she steps out, Lydia turns to Stiles, blows him a kiss and gives him a pointed look. Stiles has absolutely no idea what it means. It looks a lot like her “please don’t die” look, but also kind of like her “go get some” look. Stiles is Confused. He makes a face at her, and she just smiles, steps out the door, and vanishes behind Parrish.

Argent already flew like a bat out of hell to his underground lair or wherever the fuck he “sleeps”. And Derek is clumsily putting on his shoes, fumbling with his keys. Stiles is pretty sure his eyes are closed.

Stiles clears his throat, shuffles around. No way is he staying in this house on his own. It might be broad daylight outside, but No. As soon as he’s alone, the darkness and fear pushing at the edges of his mind will eat him alive. Derek will help a bro out, give him a ride to the station, right? He won’t, like, make Stiles talk about his feelings, right? Right??

Saving him from the utter humiliation of having to ask for something, Derek just lifts his one open eye to Stiles, squints at him.

“Come on, get your coat. I’ll give you a ride”, he says, slurring a bit.

Stiles doesn’t need to be told twice. He stumbles about, grabs his keys, his phone and the journal Argent has lent him with the information about spark fire, and follows Derek out.

He just about face plants when he sees the car parked at the corner of the house.

Derek unlocks the Camaro without sparing a glance at Stiles. 

“What?” he grumbles. “I’m off shift, I couldn’t take the cruiser.”

Stiles nods a bit frantically, swallows. Yeah, that makes total sense. Derek had to take his sexy car with him. Stiles has a million questions, but Derek seems to droop further the longer he stands there. 

“Um, you, uh… you sure you can drive, there?”, Stiles asks, purely out of the kindness of his heart. “If you want, I- I can, um…”

“No chance”, Derek interrupts, barely even managing a smirk. “Get in.”

::

They’re driving at snail’s pace into the deserted, rainy street of Beacon Hills. In the gloomy light, everything looks like a bad setting for a TV show. Stiles kinda wishes that was his life. He might get more sleep that way. 

The silence between them is comfortable, but Stiles can’t help poking at it.

“I can’t believe Lydia just... left me. Women, right?” he tries joking, glancing at Derek. His eyebrows look extra squinty. He pretends Stiles isn’t there, or he maybe just doesn’t notice him.

They drive in silence until they round the corner to the Sheriff’s station. 

“You can drop me off here”, Stiles says, fiddling with the Camaro’s sexy seat belt.

Derek looks at him, lifts one eyebrow.

“You’re not going to the station.”

Stiles lets his head thump on the Camaro’s sexy headrest. This is not the time for sexy arguments. Uh, stupid. He means stupid arguments. God, he’s delirious. 

“Uh, yes I am”, he protests. “I’m not sleeping at my dad’s. That’s where crazy murderous bitches are, Derek.”

Derek’s eyebrows are so deeply furrowed, his eyes are almost entirely obscured. Stiles almost can’t find the green in them. “You’re not sleeping in your dad’s office again, Stiles. You can’t be alone right now.”

Yeah, that’s exactly Stiles’ point. But he doesn’t like it being pointed out by someone else. 

“Dude, what? I can.”

Derek is shaking his head. “No”, he says, final. “You can stay at mine”, he adds awkwardly “... I have a couch.”

Stiles lets out his breath in a “oof”. “Dude, you don’t have to-”

Derek stops at an intersection. It takes him a minute to turn his head toward Stiles and focus on him. Stiles squirms in the Camaro’s sexy seat. 

“Stiles”, Derek says, stops. Then he seems to remember he had stuff to say. “You can’t be alone. What if Jenna uses your connection? You’ll sleep on my couch. That’s… safe.” 

Stiles considers it. He’s too tired to find a counter-argument, reasonable or otherwise. “Okay”, he agrees. “Safe. That’s… good.”

Derek starts driving again, nodding slowly. “Uh uh. Safe. Good.”

“Good.”

::

Derek’s apartment is… not what Stiles imagined. It’s not big, or dusty, or a safety hazard like the loft. It’s not dark or rusty like the abandoned train station. It’s not old and charred like the Hale house. It’s a perfectly normal apartment for a perfectly normal dude. There’s a couch and a TV and a small kitchen with a truly terrifyingly state-of-the-art coffee machine. The walls are covered with art and maps of places in Europe and Asia and South-America. There’s a picture of Cora and Derek on an end table, tanned and grinning, eyes shut tight, a waterfall in the background. Stiles picks it up while Derek busies himself with finding a spare pillow and a blanket. 

They look happy. Carefree. It’s so hard to imagine, being carefree. 

Derek comes back from the bedroom with his loot, dumps it on the couch. He approaches Stiles slowly, looks at the picture over his shoulder. 

“That was in Argentina. A handful of years ago.”

Stiles nods, tries to control his voice. “You guys look good. Happy.”

Derek sighs, nods. “I guess we were, yeah.” He takes the picture from Stiles’ hands, puts it back on the table. “I’ll show you where the bedroom is.”

Stiles tries not to take the bait but. He waggles his eyebrows at him. “Bit forward, don’t you think?”

Derek rolls his eyes as he leads him through a hallway. “Shut up. You sleep in my room. I’m taking the couch.”

“What? N-”

“Stiles”, Derek interrupts with his no-bullshit, I’m-the-alpha tone. Rude. “How long’s it been since you slept in a bed?”

Stiles pretends to think about it, but he knows exactly how long it’s been. Last time he slept in a bed, was the night his dad disappeared. Six days and about twenty hours ago. That’s how long. He doesn’t tell Derek, but he silently concedes his point with a nod. He’s too exhausted to argue, anyway. Which, considering his track record, is pretty amazing.

Stiles watches Derek as he explains where the spare toothbrush and towels are as if he’s a total moron who never stayed over at anyone’s house before. He’s just raw enough to admit to himself that he’s grateful to be there. He doesn’t want to be alone right now.

When Derek closes the door behind himself, Stiles collapses on the bed, immediately enveloped with the clean smell of crisp white sheets. He’s asleep before he can register the fluffiness of Derek’s pillows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been asked: why is scott's pack not more present in this?
> 
> listen.  
> first, because it's my fic, and I do whatever I want.  
> second, it's because I believe that in the absence of immediate danger and stiles' or lydia's "strict parent" energy, scott's pack kind of... drifted apart. they went to college, made new friends. they're not that into each other anymore.  
> kira fucked off to a place where she was much more appreciated, though she's always happy to help. malia is doing her own thing, it's probably in the woods, and it's probably violent. liam is smoking a lot of weed. the other kids from the pack don't exist in this fic because I don't remember them.  
> it's life, man. you don't stay as close to your teenage buddies as you'd like. but that's good because now that you're all grown up you realize they're assholes.  
> the end.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is it ! this is the climax chapter. I am so excited for you guys to read it!  
> I wrote the first part over a year ago and now it's finally done ToT  
> I really hope you guys will like it :)
> 
> oh and I can pretty much confirm this story will be wrapped up by the end of next week :D

Stiles is awoken by a gurgle, a hiss and a muffled curse. A quick glance at the window: it’s dark out, drizzle on the window pane. He follows the source of the noise, stumbling, to the kitchen, where Derek is engaged in a fierce glaring contest with his coffee machine. 

The floor is covered in coffee beans. One of the machine’s many sticking-out bits is hissing violently at Derek, spitting boiling water and steam at irregular intervals. Derek is glaring back with one eye open, hands tucked into his armpits. He looks barely awake and  _ furious _ , in his grey and blue checkered pajama pants. It’s adorable.

Stiles clears his throat, hides his snicker behind his hand when Derek jumps. He raises his eyebrows at the mess, enjoys Derek’s sleepy fumbling for a second. Then, with the ease of someone who paid off part of his student loans by working as a barista all through college, he locates the source of the gurgling, works the machine as it is supposed to be worked. In under a minute, he has hot, blessedly caffeinated beverage dripping in awaiting mugs.

He turns toward Derek, who’s leaning on the counter behind him, watching in awe. Or possibly still asleep. 

“Hi”, Stiles croaks at him.

A corner of Derek’s mouth ticks up. He extends his hand wordlessly.

“Hey,” he answers finally, when Stiles puts a mug full of black coffee in his extended hand.

They drink their coffee in silence, interrupted only by the intermittent gurgle of the machine and Stiles opening a series of blank cupboard doors, trying to locate sugar. It’s kinda nice. Barefoot in the kitchen, leaning on opposite counters, taking the time to wake up with frankly, Stiles must admit, amazing coffee. It’s really nice. And Stiles is not just thinking that because he might die today. Tonight. Whatever.

“So”, he says, breaking the silence and his own peace of mind.

Derek gives him a preemptively annoyed look. “So?” 

Stiles wants to keep this tentative quiet they’ve got going on intact. He also wants to ask Derek a million questions, like “Are you afraid?” and “How do you not die of loneliness here?” and “What happens to this town if we all die?”

“Sleep well, on the couch?” he asks instead.

Derek snorts softly into his coffee. His right eye opens a tiny sliver more. 

“Yeah, I did.” He sticks his chin out, defensive. “It’s a good couch.”

Stiles wills himself not to, but he feels a teasing smile tugging at his lips. 

“What’d you do?” he asks. “Steal it? Find it in a dumpster?”

Derek rolls his eyes, opening them fully for the first time. He scratches at his hair where it’s grayest, behind his left ear. 

“I bought it”, he answers. “From Ikea.” 

Stiles imagines it. Derek Hale the Werewolf, five o’clock shadow, glare of Doom, leather jacket, speed walking angrily toward the sofa showroom. Derek Hale the Deputy in his soft grey sweater with patches on the elbows, calling an Ikea employee by the name on their nametag, asking for advice on fluff to lumbar support ratio, making her blush. Nope. Can’t see it. 

“Uh”, Stiles says. “Can’t picture that.”

Derek rolls his eyes again. It might be his instinctual response to Stiles. 

“Stiles”, he says with his Serious Deputy voice.

Stiles has run out of deflection. He sighs once, short and bracing.

“So, you ready?” he asks.

Derek considers him. He squares his shoulder reflexively, sips at his coffee. 

“I don’t think I can ever really be ready for… that kind of thing”, he says in a deep, honest voice, “but. I’m as ready as I always am, yes.”

Stiles cocks his head. He can’t help trying to make each of their conversations a taunt. He doesn’t know what he’s afraid of, why he always avoids pure honesty with Derek. Or maybe he does know why.

“Always expecting the worst, Deputy Hale?” he taunts anyway.

Derek lifts one eyebrow, only half rising to the challenge. He looks at Stiles, burrows deeper into the warmth of his mug. 

“Can you blame me?”

The real answer is no, but Stiles won’t concede his point, so he makes a face at his quickly emptying mug, busies himself with pouring a new one. When he turns around, Derek’s eyes travel up to his, ears slightly red. Stiles clears his throat. 

“Where do you think Chris sleeps when he’s in town?” he deflects.

Derek cocks his head in thought, fingernails clicking on the mug in his hands. 

“He probably has a network of underground lairs nobody knows of”, he tells Stiles very seriously. “One for everyday of the week.” A smirk plays at his lips. “Probably keeps a beard trimmer in each of them.”

Stiles puts his mug down on the counter beside him. Coffee sloshes inside it, but doesn’t spill. Stiles turns away from it, toward Derek. He’s hunched over his own mug, eyes slits of sleep-deprived blue-green, radiating self-satisfaction over his lame joke. He’s leaning against the counter facing Stiles, bare feet covered by his too-long pair of pajama pants. Stiles is wide awake.

His heart beats in his fingertips as he moves. His mind screams at him that this is a bad idea, but he can’t make himself stop. He takes a careful step, right into Derek’s personal space. He feels Derek’s breath itch, right on the side of his neck, as he reaches for Derek’s mug, sets it on the counter next to him. He puts his thumb on the inside of Derek’s wrist, feels the pulse there jump in time with his own. Stiles swallows. 

He lifts his head as slow as he dares to, looks into Derek’s eyes from under his lashes. Derek seems stuck, mouth open in a soft sort of shock, eyes wide. But his hand is closing over Stiles’ and his knees widen to accommodate him. Stiles leans in.

“Breathe”, he whispers, right on the edge of Derek’s lips. 

He closes the gap.

Their lips meet. 

Derek startles out of his shock. He stumbles into the kiss enthusiastically, eagerly, prying Stiles’ mouth open with his tongue, dragging him into his body. Stiles intended for this to be a simple peck, a question, a possibility of a kiss. But his hand is fisted in Derek’s shirt and the other one is in his hair. Derek’s hands are on his hips and everything is heat and the taste of coffee in Derek’s mouth and their shared breaths. 

Stiles bites at Derek’s lower lip, making him gasp. Stiles’ hand travels from his hair down to the slope of his- the coffee machine whirrs angrily.

Stiles and Derek separate, barely. Derek’s hands squeeze Stiles’ hips. Stiles’ head comes to rest on Derek’s collarbone, neck bowed. They breathe heavily as the coffee machine keeps showing its displeasure. 

Stiles slowly steps out of Derek’s space, but as he does so, he leans in one last time and presses a tiny feather of a kiss to the corner of Derek’s mouth. He steps back, leans on the counter facing Derek, and offers him his mug back as he takes his own.

Derek takes his coffee, lets his fingers linger on Stiles’. Stiles flashes back to a dozen times this has happened, Derek’s fingers on his own, lingering, as a coffee cup, a file, a picture, was passed between them. Oh.

Derek looks at Stiles, gaze heavy, determined, unapologetic. Stiles looks back. Takes a sip of his coffee. Can’t help the smile, toothy and genuine, that takes over his face. Derek’s eyebrows tick up at it, his own answering smirk small and surprised.

“Why?” Derek asks. He sees Stiles’ eye roll coming. “I mean, why now?” he amends.

Stiles can’t resist it, then. He raises one eyebrow in a perfectly executed Hale move. He chucks his phone as Derek, who puzzles at the blinking lights on the screen. Seven missed calls from Lydia. He waits until Derek looks back up at him, face grim, to deliver his perfect shot. 

“It’s now or never, isn’t it?”

::

Shit fuck fuck fuck shit-

Stiles is running through woods that look at lot like the Preserve, except everything that isn’t trees is a deep, tangible darkness, including the ground. Stiles knows he’s running, but he can’t see or feel his feet. His hands are blurs of white in front of him. He runs and he uses all of the air in his lungs to yell “Lydia!”, hears it echo through the trees and get lost in the forest. 

He keeps running even though his lungs are failing him and this forest has no end and he’s alone. He knows somewhere, he’s tethered to Derek and Lydia and if he concentrates on something else than darkness he can almost feel them at the edge of his consciousness, calling, looking for him. He’s  _ here _ . He keeps running.

Their plan is failing. 

Lydia found his dad. She used Derek’s power and her own to draw him back to them, and his dad was looking at them and calling Stiles’ name and they _had_ him. Stiles was holding him, enveloping him in a tight, bone breaking Stilinski hug. _His_ _dad_ was _here_. But she was there too. 

She was made of darkness, oozing it through her eyes and mouth. His dad looked scared and small. She wasn’t powerless. Stiles could feel it: she was the lion, they were the mice. She was playing with her food. Stiles wanted to yell at Chris but he was too busy running for his life.

He is somewhere in the forest. They’d all been in the cave beneath the Nemeton, where Lydia and Chris had tracked the most powerful traces of the demon’s energy. He’d been crushing Lydia’s hand in his and asking Chris if he was sure and feeling Derek’s claws piercing the skin of his neck. He remembers the feeling of Derek’s mind (warmth, reassurance, determination, grief) in his own as Lydia screamed  _ inside their joined minds. _ Now he can’t stop running. 

She’s here. He can feel her darkness raising the fine hair at the nape of his neck, he can feel his mind getting slower. Is he running? He can’t see his legs move. He can’t feel them. He can’t feel anything, just his lungs breathing darkness in, oxygen out. His dad’s voice is talking to him in a fast whisper, but he can’t make out what he's saying. He’s not sure he still has ears. He tries to remember what it felt like, hearing his dad’s voice. All there is is void. Ashes. Grief. A piercing anger goes through him, making him shiver. So he still has a spine.

He hears Lydia’s high pitched scream again, but it’s not a banshee scream. She’s screaming his name, over and over again, like a mantra. He’s rooted to the spot, unable to move his feet (he has feet!). When he looks down as his hands (he has hands!), he sees sharp, dark claws at the end of his fingers, glinting blue as he examines them. Wait. His eyes are glowing blue. A rumble forms in his throat at each exhale, becoming a growl as he bares his fangs at the darkness surrounding him.

Warmth. Ashes. Grief. Determination. Anger. He slashes at the darkness around him yelling and snarling, struggling against the invisible bonds that keep his feet unmoving. He feels the urge to run, digs his claws into the earth and leap, so strong inside him he might burst with it. He keeps slashing at nothing.

His dad voice is soothing in his ears. “Stop it kiddo, you’ll hurt yourself.” 

That’s not his dad, he knows. Anger. Grief. He breathes oxygen in, darkness out as he keeps fighting against nothing. His dad’s voice becomes increasingly frustrated, distorted by the demon’s anger. He can feel it on his skin, burning like acid, catching at his claws, as sure as he feels his own terror and exhaustion creeping in against a strength and determination that is not entirely his own.

Gunshot resonate through his whole body. He looks down at himself, but can’t see any wound, can’t feel any sudden pain. He’s still alone against the darkness. Gunshots again. It must be another fight, one that is not his own, that is happening elsewhere. If only Stiles could run, he might be able to find them, help them. He slashes and tears and strains against nothing. His skin his muscles his eyes his lungs burn.

Warmth again, from the back of his mind to the center of his chest, expanding and burning him from the inside out. His spark. He tries to concentrate on it, feeling it run from his chest to the tip of his claws. If only his hands could catch on something solid, so he could spread the fire running through him… He claws at the darkness with all the strength left in him, roars.

The ground is trembling under Stiles’s feet, trees blurring as they shake. An ear-shattering howl resonates through the forest. Stiles hunches in on himself, arms covering his ears. A pitiful whine escapes his throat. His vision goes spotty, his whole body gives. He collapses.

::

He opens his eyes. Two sharps beams of red light blind him instantly, white fangs bared and claws dripping with a dark, slimy sludge. Then Scott says “ugh, gross” and Stiles’s entire world shifts seventy degrees to the left. He manages two stumbling steps to a rotting support beam, where he empties the contents of his stomach (mostly coffee).

He kneels there, elbows resting against the support beam, catching his breath. He can feel warm blood trickle slowly down his neck to the floor, where it joins the pool of vomit. He lifts his head just enough to do a headcount. 

Closer to him is Lydia, curled up in a tight ball in Parrish’s lap. He’s stroking her hair away from her neck, trying to get at the gauges there. In the darkness of that corner, he hears more than he sees Derek, emitting a steady, deep rumbling growl, hunched in on himself, still wolfed out. Crap.

Stiles starts dragging himself toward him, but movement to his right catches his attention. Chris is striding toward someone lying on the floor, whose breathing sounds erratic even to Stiles’ ringing ears. He tries to adjust the blurry edges of his vision enough to… His dad. His  _ dad _ . His dad is here.  _ Here _ , in the cellar, with them,  _ here _ . His  _ dad _ . They made it. They brought him back.

He changes his course to get to him as Chris checks his vitals, props his head up under his knees. He can’t make it more than two half steps before he’s collapsing forward, into Scott suddenly appearing arms. Which are covered in black, slimy goop. Gross. Scott hefts him up with a “Oop, got ya buddy!”, all but carries him to his dad. 

Stiles drops right next to him, takes his hands in his and feels his pulse. He looks up at Chris questioningly, gets a short, simple nod in answer, which most probably means his dad is unconscious but ok. He’s here, really here with them. Stiles can’t believe it. Black goop is seeping through his tattered hoodie, Scott hovering over him awkwardly, dripping the stuff everywhere. Oh, and it  _ smells _ . What  _ is  _ that?

He looks up at Scott, blinking rapidly. He’s covered in it, eyes still tinged with red, looking like usual, which means a healthy mixture of bewildered and earnest. He glances between Stiles and his dad. 

“Wh…”, Stiles wheezes. Scott’s gross, ugh, so gross hand finds his neck, starts pulling at his pain. A little lightheaded from werewolf mojo, he tries again. 

“When did you get here?” he manages to croak out.

Scott smiles at him, sunny and cute even in his disheveled state. 

“I came home from mini break. I got your messages! I tracked your phone’s GPS” - Stiles allows himself a surge of pride for his friend’s smarts. He trained him well - “and I got here and this black monster lady was standing over you and black mist was like- coming out of your eyes, dude, it was freaky!”, Scott exclaims, waving his hands around. “And Lydia was like screaming and Derek was wolfed out and freaking out and his claws were still in your neck and Chris was shooting at the monster lady and I tried to get to you but your skin was like burning and I just-” he holds up his claws, showing off the black goo still permeating them, “I panicked! I howled and clawed the monster lady’s throat out and it just… flopped down...” He points at a heap of black goop Stiles hadn’t yet seen, next to the stairs. 

“It’s dead, I guess”, Scott finishes with a shrug.

Stiles is… wow. He doesn’t have words. He’s- actually speechless. Wow. He looks to Chris, who’s frowning, deep in thought. Chris looks back at Stiles, scratches at his beard. 

“I guess… combined with your spark and Lydia’s scream…”, he hedges, “an alpha’s claws would work as a last blow.” He shrugs.

Scott is looking between them, nodding like he totally understands the brutal mess of a situation he just waltzed into. Stiles takes Chris’ place at his father’s head while Chris goes over to the pile of black stuff to make sure it is well and truly dead. He detaches his eyes from his father’s unconscious face long enough to take a sweep of the room. Lydia’s still in Parrish’s arms but she’s looking at him, eyes clear. Scott is kneeling beside him, holding the Sheriff’s hand in case there’s any pain there to be taken.

Derek is still crouched in the same dark corner. The blue of his eyes has receded a bit, and his eyebrows are back in their bushy splendor. But he’s still growling softly, clawing at the ground. Stiles feels a tingle in his neck. 

“Derek!”, he calls out across the room. Blue eyes snap to his immediately. “Come out of it, buddy. We need you.” It takes a few minutes, but as Stiles watches, he can see Derek coming back to himself. Hazel-green-grey-gold eyes look back at him. Warm. Sad. Determined. 

Stiles lets one corner of his mouth tick up, even as the rest of his body droops. Chris is back at their side, checking on his dad once more.

“We should get him to the hospital, now”, Chris says, looking at Scott. 

Stiles couldn’t agree more. Scott oh so carefully swoops the Sheriff up in a bridal carry, makes his way up the stairs, Argent trailing after him. 

Stiles tries to get up, but his goddam legs keep betraying him. He feels a hand at his elbow, looks up to find Derek at his side, giving him a questioning look. He nods once. The world turns sideways as Derek swoops him in a bridal carry too. Okay. Not what Stiles thought was gonna happen, but he’s too exhausted to care. Derek follows Lydia and Parrish up the stairs, carrying him.

“Try not to enjoy this too much”, Stiles mumbles, jabbing Derek in the chest.

He hears a gentle snort right next to his ear. Then he passes out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like to dedicate the first part of this chapter to Ron Weasley, who is an inspiration to us all


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ending things is haaaaardddd :(

Stiles chews on his thumbnail, knees jiggling helplessly. The plastic chair in the waiting room squeaks under him. God, this is awful. He hates waiting. He’s sure Melissa is taking her sweet time in some sort of revenge for when he was eight and he uprooted all the rose bushes in her garden because Scotty needed a proper flower crown to be a princess. Scott had cut himself pretty badly above his left eyebrow and ended up needing stitches. Good times.

Finally, after about a century of waiting, his dad and Melissa round the corner. She’s pushing his wheelchair, smiling down at him, while he flirts like there’s no tomorrow. Stiles hides a smile behind his hand. These two.

His dad spots him, smiles wide and happy. He looks tired, smaller too. A pallor to him he never had before. His arm is still in a sling and they only removed the leg cast yesterday. He’ll have to walk with  cane for a few weeks, he’s gonna  _ love _ that. But he’s wearing real clothes, not that godawful hospital gown, and he’s clean shaven. He’s there. Alive and gently chiding Melissa about being able to walk, dammit, I am not  _ that _ old.

Stiles has to take a moment. In the five weeks since the...  _ thing _ happened, Stiles has not been able to enter his dad’s room and see him there, alive, without being overcome with emotion. Relief. Love. Thankfulness for Chris’ old hunter tricks, Scott’s crazy luck and his friends not letting him drown in his own pool of sweat and tears and self-loathing. He’s been. A mess, emotionally. Refused to sleep anywhere but in his dad’s room, the first week. Derek eventually coaxed him out of it by promising a constant guard of supernaturally oriented (“but not evil!” Stiles had interjected) cops at his dad’s door. Scott’s pack helped, too.

After that, he’d been doing better. Lydia stayed with him in his dad’s house, sleeping together his old bedroom for a while, until he was able to sleep alone. He’s still working on the nightmares. He’s eating and grooming regularly too. He’s even started fitting a bit of work here and there. Things are better.

Now his dad’s being discharged and he’s taking him home, bundling him up in a blanket and parking him on the couch. They’re gonna eat fries and turkey burgers and marathon whatever reruns of SVU they can find on TV.

Things are better.

::

Waiting at the house for a mini-welcome home party, are a small delegation of people Stiles and his dad owe their life to. Lydia flew back from Boston just for today. Scott brought his sunny smile and an array of casseroles Melissa spent all week cooking. Parrish is in uniform, ready for his shift. Derek brought coffee. Decaf for the Sheriff. Stiles smiles at him, Derek smiles back. It lasts a few seconds longer than entirely appropriate.

Things between them have been. Nice. Quiet. Stiles was at the hospital a lot. Derek brought him coffee and argued with him about sleep deprivation and boundaries and police surveillance. Stiles called him a few times at ungodly hours in the morning, after a particularly difficult nightmare. Derek grumbled about it mildly, then listened to him talk and breathe over the phone.

Sometimes when they pass a cup of coffee between them, Stiles lets his fingers linger, and Derek’s fingers linger back. They don’t talk about it. But it’s nice.

They all sit down around the living room, talk about things that are not killing demons. Lydia sits on Stiles’ lap and runs her hands through his hair, which quietly offends Parrish. That’s always a bonus in Stiles’ book. The Sheriff grills his deputies on the happenings at the station, whines until Stiles agrees to get him a beer. 

Nobody tries to kill them or eat them or plots their demise. 

::

After two weeks, the two Stilinski men come to a truce and an understanding. 

The Sheriff is well enough to walk around the house. The shoulder sling came off three days ago, he can take care of his goddam self, he’s not a  _ baby _ , Stiles. Stiles is very close to exploding in his face, because he’s just trying to take care of his dad, oh my god old man, just eat your fucking vegetables, stop being a _ baby _ .

So yeah, a truce. And an understanding. The house cannot survive two grown Stilinski being in each other’s pockets all the time. Neither can their sanity. And, no matter how nitpicky Stiles gets, even he (after a few stern phone calls from Melissa, Scott, and even  _ Lydia _ ) must admit that his dad is doing well. He can take care of himself now. Dammit, he has less nightmares about it than Stiles does. He’s fine. It’s time for Stiles to go.

He tries to threaten Parrish into organizing constant surveillance of the house, comes close to punching him again when Parrish enumerates reasons why that would be against the law. He settles when Derek promises to keep an eye (read: spy) on him every couple of days. Stiles wants to settle the promise with a blood pact. Derek rolls his eyes at him, takes him for coffee at the place on main.

They sit at the dining table one night. Just him, his dad, and the sea of pictures and evidence that constitutes the nightmare the last month has been. They peace it all back together, sharing information on what the other has missed, each with their glass of whiskey and a healthy dose of sturdy pats on the back. Like Stilinski men do. 

The Sheriff explains to Stiles everything he can remember about tracking Gerard Argent after he came back and lurked around Melissa’s home. About trying to build a real, evidence-based case against him for the Hale fire. About tracking him in a warehouse at the edge of Beacon Hills, finding him dead there, a scary pile of nothing where the hunter used to be, then blackness. Then starting to lose time, and hiring Jenna and Derek. Doing things and not remembering why or how he did them. Slowly forgetting to care. Melissa pulling away from him, and not being able to remember why that was important. Stiles listens, tight-jawed, speechless. 

The Sheriff can’t remember anything after his car accident, so Stiles fills him in on the events on his side of reality. He retells punching Parrish in great, 3D details. The Sheriff chuckles amicably. Stiles tells him about losing time, too, and feeling like everything was slipping through his fingers: his emotions, his people, himself.

They put together what they can remember of what happened in the cellar under the Nemeton with what Chris had told them after he analyzed whatever goop-filled remains of the demon he could salvage. The picture that appears is strange and hair-raising: Jenna wasn’t stupid, she was expecting an attack. She drained the Sheriff’s energy almost fully just before Lydia called to him across dimensions. She just… followed him. As simple as that. She’d taken so much energy from him that she could survive without another victim for an hour or so. Even with Stiles’ spark fueled by Derek’s powers and Lydia’s scream, they would have probably all died if it wasn’t for Scott’s timely arrival. What do you know. Scotty saves the day yet again.

When every single fragment of evidence and every piece of the puzzle is put into place, when they both end up with a stack of notes that could fill a book, they pack it all up. They look at it sitting there for a long moment, drinking their whiskey and sharing bewildered, “how did we make it out alive” looks. Then Stiles carries it all up to the back porch, and they set it on fire. They get blankets. Stiles makes tea. They sit quietly on the porch swing while the sun sets, watching their nightmare burn.

::

Derek drives Stiles to the airport. Stiles is kind of uncomfortable about it, but Derek offered in that gruff way that brooked no argument. He appreciates the poetry of it: they’ve come full circle. Or whatever misshapen mess of a situation they were in to start with, anyway. Scott had offered to take him, too, but Stiles is not an idiot. There’s only so many planes he can miss. 

They get coffee from the nice place on main before they hit the road. The drive is quiet, comfortable, easy. They spend most of it in a heated, silent war for the control of the stereo, which Stiles wins, to nobody’s surprise.

When they get to the terminal, the lighthearted atmosphere has vanished. Derek is tight-jawed and silent, glowering like the good old days. It makes Stiles equally nervous and fond. 

At the mouth of the gate, Derek sets Stiles’ bag down between them. He’d been carrying it since they got out of the car, throwing Stiles a glare every time he opened his mouth to protest. They look at each other, silent. Derek’s gaze pulls at something in Stiles’ chest, right behind his ribs, makes him want to…

“So”, Derek says.

Stiles works his mouth silently. “So”, Stiles repeats.

“You’re leaving”, Derek points out the obvious, a belligerent twist to his mouth. He looks down at the bag he’s been carrying. “You think you’re ready?”

Stiles is surprised by the question and not. He’s been asking himself the same question since he booked his flight. 

“I.. don’t know. This”, Stiles makes a circular movement, encompassing himself, the situation, maybe the whole of Beacon Hills,”is who I am. No matter how hard I tried to shake it- it seeped into my pores. I’m tired of running from it. I’m good at this”, he smiles.

Derek nods. “Yeah, you are.”

Stiles meets his eyes. “ _ We _ are.”

An exhausted-looking man passes by them, dragging a screaming four year old by the hand. Her other arm is extended desperately toward a display of Elsa dolls.

Stiles shuffles his feet, clears his throat. He manfully resists the urge to chew on his hoodie sleeve. It’s a new one, electric blue and soft. It smells like his dad’s laundry detergent. He likes it.

“But I do have a life out there. A job, you know? And a house, and people, and other stuff…” He settles for chewing on the hoodie string. “I gotta make sure Lydia doesn’t kill her assistant.” He manages a wry smile. “So I gotta go back and- try to figure things out, right?” He shrugs. “Be an adult and shit?”

Derek looks at the ground. “Right.”

That thing is still pulling behind Stiles’ ribs. He needs to get into a plane and out of here. Derek won’t look at him.

“Well-”, Stiles starts, no idea whatsoever as to how he’s going to finish this sentence-

“What if you didn’t go”, Derek talks right over him. It’s the perfect lack of inflection that makes it a real question, one Derek is actually invested in. 

Stiles’ heart makes a valiant effort to beat out of his chest. He stumbles forward, grabs onto Derek wrist to avoid falling face first on his bag. He looks for Derek’s eyes, looks and looks. Until Derek looks back, brows furrowed, steeling himself for rejection.

He’s so stupid. Stiles wants to kiss him so bad. 

But he doesn’t. He squeezes his wrist.

“I gotta try, Derek”, Stiles says. He doesn’t add “I’m sorry”; he knows Derek will take it as some sort of taunt. They’re so much alike.

He lets go of Derek’s wrist, misses the warmth as soon as he’s stopped touching him. He grabs his bag. 

The screaming four year old is making a break for it, running at full speed toward the dolls, her dad right on her heels.

Stiles gives Derek one last bittersweet smile before he turns around and walks to the gate.


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> only 2 chapters to go \o/
> 
> !! the first part of this chapter is Derek POV, then we switch back to Stiles.  
> I thought it was important to show Derek's side of this whole mess. also, it's fun. :)
> 
> thank you, as always, for reading, kudosing and commenting. you guys are the reason this fic got written. hearts upon your FACES.

Time passes, as it is bound to do.

Things go quiet again. Derek and Chris get coffee together every Thursday, keep each other informed of potential threats. They gossip. Whatever.

Derek makes good on his promise to Stiles. He goes for a run every night, takes a perimeter of the Sheriff's house, thinks about texting Stiles. He doesn’t.

The Sheriff comes back to work eventually. He gets babied by the station staff for about half a day before he explodes in typical Stilinski fashion. The officers gets back to work with a healthy fear of their leader.

The Sheriff and Derek grill steak on the back porch of the Sheriff’s house every Sunday. They’re joined more often than not by Melissa and Scott, sometimes by Parrish.

Derek knows that Melissa texts Stiles full weekly reports on his dad’s health. He doesn’t ask about him.

Honestly, he should get a gold medal for how much he just doesn’t ask about Stiles. Even when the Sheriff spends the entirety of lunch complaining about Stiles nagging him to retire and policing his eating habits and checking up on him at any hour of the day. Even when he’s showing Parrish pictures of Stiles’ newly finished kitchen, trying to hide how proud he is of his son for renovating it himself. Even when the Sheriff and Melissa are discussing Christmas plans of possibly going up to Boston. Even when Scott is showing the Sheriff the latest string of silly selfies he and Stiles keep sending each other. He doesn’t ask about him.

He eats his steak, is careful not to snap any of the cutlery in two, grinds his teeth. He pretends it doesn’t hurt, to not be a part of Stiles’ life. He doesn’t ask. Out of sight, out of mind, he tells himself. Like a mantra.

::

Derek’s in the Sheriff’s office, in the uncomfortable chair facing the desk. He’s bent over a file, discussing the possibility of their latest perp being of the supernatural persuasion when the door bangs open, rattling the windows and the picture frame on the desk.

Stiles storms in, in a fit of righteous fury, hoodie flapping behind him like a cape. His hair is wild, his eyes huge in his head, he looks deranged. He’s the hottest thing Derek has ever seen.

Stiles almost jumps over the desk in his haste to get in his dad’s face. The Sheriff seems to be taking all that in with a resigned but serene attitude.

“How you doing son?” he greets Stiles placidly.

For a split second, Derek fears for his _life_.

Stiles comes to a stop next to Derek’s chair, doesn’t spare him a glance as he hunches over the desk and pokes an accusing finger right in his dad’s face.

“Why won’t you even fucking consider it, huh? Why won’t you retire?” Stiles voice is trembling with anger.

The Sheriff rolls his eyes at him.

As discreetly as possible, Derek tries to sit up straighter, brushing away the wrinkles in his uniform pants, to no avail. He tries to tune out Stiles and the Sheriff’s yelling as much as he can, as he slowly combs a hand through his hair. His beard is a lost cause, he knows. He hasn’t trimmed it in forever. Fuck. There’s a ketchup stain on his breast pocket.

Stiles has rounded the desk now, quickly side-stepping him. Both him and the Sheriff are screaming at each other with lots of gesturing and eye-rolling. Derek wonders if he should do something about it. Just as he’s about to speak up, the two of them fall into each other’s arms and hug fiercely, gripping at each other.

“Tsk”, Parrish says from the frame of the open door, carrying a case file. He’s shaking his head. “Every time”, he tells Derek with a commiserating look, before vanishing toward the copy machine.

Derek tries to get up, but he can’t do so without making a lot of noise, squeaking and scraping all around. He clears his throat, crosses his legs and bumps his knee on the desk. He tries to mask his wince as the two men finally disengage from their hug, clapping each other on the shoulder and surreptitiously wiping at their eyes. Derek realizes a second too late it’s not attractive to sit there and stare with his mouth open. He whips his head down and pretends to be immersed in the file that’s sitting open on the Sheriff’s desk.

Stiles turns around and seems to notice him for the first time. He smiles down at him, small, eyes fond. Derek swallows.

“Hey Derek.”

He’s not sure he can manage full on sentences right now, so he settles for a nod. “Stiles.”

Stiles’ smile widens. He turns around toward his dad. “So, wanna get lunch?”

The Sheriff’s eyes light up like Stiles mentioned Christmas. “Yes!” He looks to Derek. “Burgers?”

Derek is not entirely sure what’s happening. He shrugs.

“Yes?” he answers tentatively.

Stiles rolls his eyes, points at his dad. “You won’t be able to use Derek as a shield, old man. Tofu burger for you.”

The Sheriff scoffs. Just like that they’re back at it. Derek sighs, gets up, letting his chair scrape against the floor. The Stilinski men follow him out, squabbling like children. Lord, give him strength.

::

The Sheriff gets a bacon cheeseburger with onion rings. Stiles pouts.

::

Someone’s banging on Derek’s skull with a rusty hammer. He lifts his head off his pillow, a string of drool connecting him to it. Bang bang bang. Not his head. The front door.

He stumbles down the hall, putting on a shirt as he goes. He stops at the door, sniffing for any signs of evil. Other than the relentless knocking at his door at an ungodly hour.

When he finally manages to coordinate his fingers enough to turn the lock and throw the door open, he kinda wishes he hadn’t. Stiles is standing there in the neon light of the hallway, beaming at him, nose red from the cold. He’s holding coffee. Derek wants to bury his face in the crook of his neck and breathe him in for hours. But that would probably be. What’s the word. Inappropriate.

Derek grunts, sure it will convey the meaning of “what the holy hell are you doing here” across.

Stiles gives him a fond look.

Goddam. It’s too early for this.

Stiles takes pity on him, pushing a blessedly hot coffee cup in his hand. Then he just stands there, sipping at his own cup, beaming at Derek, like he has any right-

Derek leans on the frame of his open front door, looking at him, jaw on the floor. He’s not equipped for this. Stiles frowns at him, puzzled, pats at Derek’s hand holding the cup until he sips at it. It’s perfect, as usual.

They stay there for a few minutes, sipping at their coffees in silence. They’ve done this a million times by now. It’s familiar and it hurts, all the same.

But Stiles Stilinski has never met a silence he didn’t break. Sounds start spurting out of him seconds before Derek registers what they actually mean. And even after that, he’s still very confused.

“What”, Derek asks, nose practically dipping into his coffee.

Stiles twists his mouth, gives Derek a look. “I said”, he repeats, “I’m sorry I was a dick to you.”

Again, with the confused. “What.”

Stiles throws his hands up.

“Oh my god dude!” he yells. “Inflection is, is a thing that- exists! And you should, you know. Use it!” He takes a few steps back in frustration, but seems to realize that yelling at the person you’re apologizing to might be counterproductive. He looks at his sneakers, brow furrowed.

Derek stays silent and frozen, not wanting to trigger another bit of shouting. It’s too goddam _early_ for _shouting_ , he has _neighbors_.

“I’m sorry”, Stiles tells him again, volume adjusted. “I was a dick. When my dad was-” - a glance at Derek - “you know... I was a total mess and I leaned on you a lot.” He smiles at Derek, genuine. “You were a good friend to me. I just... relied on you to be there for me and take my shit and help me through the whole thing even though I never asked you if you even wanted to help.” He scratches at his cheek. “And then I just grabbed you and kissed you because I’d always wanted to do it and maybe you and I were gonna die and-”

“Wait. You always-” Derek tries to interrupts but Stiles barrels right through that.

“And like five minutes before that I was fighting with my boyfriend while you were literally in the other room!” He throws his hands up, coffee sloshing inside the paper cup. “What kind of insensitive jerk am I-”

He tries to bang his head on the edge of the open door. Derek pushes it away, right before he makes contact. Stiles scowls at him.

“And after the... you know”, Stiles goes on. “We never talked about it and when you asked me to stay at the airport I wanted to kiss you so badly but I just left you there and I-”

“Wait wait wait. You- _you_ wanted to-”

“ _Yes_ Derek, okay?!” Stiles explodes in a blur of flailing arms. Spots of red are blooming his cheeks, his eyes are wide and ferocious. He is so fucking beautiful. It is _too early_ . “I have feelings for you, you moron!” His right hand catches in his hair, pulls at a few strands. “Except you’re not a moron because I made it all so complicated and unclear and it is not your fault”, Stiles continues sprinting through words earnestly, “it’s mine! You have no _idea_ how many versions of the same email I wrote to apologize and try to make things good but then I thought-”

“You thought you were just going to show up at my door with coffee at the asscrack of dawn the day after I witnessed you yelling at your father, the Sheriff, my boss,” Derek concludes.

Stiles finally _finally_ stops talking. He thinks about it for a minute, shrugs. “Pretty much, yeah.” He smiles, self-deprecating. Devastating.

Derek wants to haul him in by the front of his shirt and ravish him.

He clears his throat. “Do you want to come in?”

Stiles seems surprised for a second. He nods once, rolling his whole body on the balls of his feet. Jesus. Happy Stiles is a sight to behold.

They sit on the couch, Derek taking extreme precaution in sitting as far away from Stiles as he can bear to. They sip at their coffee in silence.

Derek fixes Stiles with a look. “Explain”.

Stiles does. Most of what he says, Derek already knew, because he was there with him, every step of the way. Puzzling over him and trying to make sense of him and being annoyed by him and getting just as obsessed with Stiles Stilinski, former gangly annoyance, as Stiles got with him. He remembers it all: the barbs, the frustration, the glances, the touches, the stolen moments of fleeting intimacy, the point of exhaustion where they couldn’t hide their own vulnerability. He was right there in courage and denial and fear, with Stiles. He fell in love with him in the middle of a gigantic shitstorm complete with demons, banshees, geriatric hunters and missing fathers, and didn’t once feel the ground drop from under his feet, or the point of impact.

When Stiles brings up Andy, Derek remembers the insane, uncontrollable jealousy that took him over every time someone even hinted at his existence, and how bewildered he was by it. He remembers seeing the man in the flesh. The bottom of his stomach had dropped out when he realized how much the man looked like his uncle. He’d spied on their entire conversation while the others were pretending not to notice his eyes glowing blue. He could hear every breath, every rustle of fabric as Stiles gripped Andy’s hand and rejected him. It was torture. And still, right then, with all his hackles raised and Lydia’s hand between his shoulder blades trying to tether him to sanity, he hadn’t clued in.

He hadn’t clued in until Stiles was giving him a determined look in his kitchen and feeling the pulse in his wrist. And then all he’d wanted to do was claim and take and provide and make Stiles proud. Make him happy. Even if they were probably going to die.

Then there was the pining, but Stiles doesn’t need to know about that.

::

Stiles talks for what feels like hours, everything he’d tried to put down in writing, time and time again, coming out. He tries as hard as he can to not edit anything out, to not redact his own thoughts, to be as honest and raw as he knows how to be. It’s slow-going at first, which is ironic considering who he is, but Derek keeps looking at him like he holds the meaning of the universe. Feeling the full power of Derek Hale’s intensity concentrated on him makes Stiles hot behind the ears, as it always does.

God, he’s such a moron. Even though he’s been able to think of little else lately, he’s still unable to pinpoint exactly when he started falling for Derek. Maybe it was at that first cup of coffee. Maybe it was the split second when he decided to kiss him because they were probably going to die. Maybe it is right now, as Derek looks at him, jaw tight, lips pursed, while Stiles stumbles on his words and doesn’t remember the exact order of events and keeps apologizing. Maybe it was ten years ago when Derek Hale threw a lost inhaler at Scott in the middle of the woods, in what was probably a very misguided threat.

It doesn’t really matter when, though.

Eventually Stiles runs out of words, voice hoarse, coffee cold in his hands. He puts his paper cup on the coffee table slowly, next to Derek’s. He has one more thing to ask.

“Can we- could we just- hang out? While I’m here?” he asks his toes.

Derek sighs, long and measured. He looks sleep-rumpled, soft and comfy in too-long pajama pants and a faded Beacon High baseball shirt. It’s almost too much to look at.

“Stiles…”

Stiles swallows, looks down at his hands where he’s wringing them in his lap. He was expecting it. Rejection.

“I mean I know you’re pretty busy”, Stiles says, “and like, I don’t know. It’s been a while, maybe you’ve, like- moved on, that’s- that’s fine, if you have honestly, I-”

Derek sighs again while Stiles babbles, dejected.

“Stiles”, he snaps.

“What?” Stiles snaps right back.

Derek gives him an intense, inquisitive look. Stiles gets to urge to check he’s pimple free.

“What happens when you go back to Boston?” Derek asks in careful, measured words. “You just… go back to Andy?”

Stiles is stunned speechless for a few seconds. God, he’s the worst. The stupidest man alive. He reaches out, grabs Derek’s wrist, holds on tightly.

“Andy and I broke up”, he says, a bit too loud. “Uh, a while ago.” He palms his forehead. He wishes he was wearing a hoodie and not this nice cashmere sweater. What was he thinking? That Derek would see him in it and think “I gotta have you now” and ravish him on the spot. So stupid. He chances a look at Derek’s face. He looks stunned, and maybe possibly, slightly horrified. Wait, he doesn’t think…

“Not because of you though”, Stiles hurries to add. He scratches at his cheek. “Well, a little because of you, or like, how I felt… about you.” He feels his cheek heat up, looks down at the hand still holding on to Derek’s wrist.

“Mostly because, you know.” He catches Derek’s eyes. “Things were different.” He makes a claw with his free hand. “He didn’t take too well to the whole, uh, supernatural thing, I guess?” he explains. “And we tried to work through it, but- I think both our hearts weren’t really in it anymore.”

Derek looks like he’s been hit by a freight train. Stiles babbles to fill the silence.

“So I’ve been sleeping on Lydia’s couch while we figure out the whole” - more gesturing - “house thing. She’s got this huge thing that she had custom-made. I guess it’s very stylish, but it’s the least comfortable thing in the world. The sofa in my dad’s office is worth ten of that crap. My back is killing me. I’m not that young anymore.”

“Stiles”, Derek interrupts, thankfully. He looks shocked, face carefully blank but for his wide eyes.

“Yes?”

Derek clears his throat. Stays silent. Clears his throat again.

Stiles seriously considers chewing on his cashmere sleeve anyway.

“Ok”, Derek says, hoarse. Like he hasn’t just cleared his throat twice. Dork. “Ok, let’s hang out.”

Stiles hesitates for a second. When Derek meets his eyes, he smiles, big and blinding. Derek turns his hand over in Stiles grip, laces their fingers together.


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that's it folks ! coming up is the epilogue, then we're DONE with this story :)

They hang out.

Stiles would like to say they’re dating, but he knows he shouldn’t. It’s too soon. Too soon after the demon, too soon after he and Andy broke up, too soon because they don’t really know each other that well.

But it feels so. Inevitable. Easy. He knows all the most important, darkest parts of Derek. He knows what his laugh sounds like, carefree and unbridled. He knows his coffee order and his favorite burger. He knows how to endlessly annoy him and he knows what his eyebrows of death look like. And Derek knows him right back.

Anyway. They’re not dating.

They go to the diner and they get coffee and Derek insists on taking him running through the Preserve despite Stiles’ many protests. They stop at the overlook, collapse on the rock Stiles sat on months ago. Stiles relays to Derek the phone call he had with Lydia here. Derek loses himself in helpless giggles, remembering Stiles’ miserable appearance when he came home carless the next day. Stiles hits him on the shoulder, Derek catches his hand, doesn’t let go.

But they’re not dating.

::

Stiles brings his dad lunch at the station one day. A veggie burger with a side of carrots. Extra curly fries for him, just to be shitty. His dad is unimpressed.

As they eat, the Sheriff raises an eyebrow. Well. That never means anything good for Stiles. 

“So”, the Sheriff starts. Stiles takes a bite of his burger, avoids his gaze. “Derek.”

Stiles chews, swallows. “What about him?”

The Sheriff raises his other eyebrow. “You guys dating?”

“No.” What? That’s the truth.

The Sheriff nods, like he doesn’t believe Stiles for one second. “Uh uh.” He takes another bite of carrot, scrunches up his nose. “I’m just saying. If you were. It wouldn’t be the worst thing.”

Stiles slurps a bit of coke through his straw. “Thanks dad, for this mortifying bit of approval.” He pops a fry into his mouth, chews with his mouth open. “Now, want to tell me what’s going on with you and Mel?”

The Sheriff scoffs, but his cheeks get the same splotchy red Stiles’ do, so there.

::

They’re not dating but Derek has Stiles pressed up on the side of the Camaro, his body a strong line of heat against Stiles’. He’s kissing his neck, worrying a mark there with his teeth, wringing tiny noises of want out of Stiles.

They went to the movies, a classic not-date activity. Derek paid for the tickets, Stiles paid for the snacks. They argued about popcorn vs twizzlers, Derek’s knee pressing against Stiles’. They were thrown out for throwing food at each other, right as the final fight scene was starting. Or was it the final declaration of feelings? Stiles can’t even remember the name of the movie.

They’re still in the theater parking lot, necking like teenagers. Derek bites at the mark he left, grinds his hips into Stiles. Oh god. Oh  _ god _ . Stiles might die if he doesn’t get his hands on him now.

Derek rumbles a noise of assent into his neck, so Stiles probably said that out loud.

He fists a hand in Derek’s hair, tugs at it to get Derek off his neck and bite at his mouth. They kiss and grind until Stiles thinks he’s going to explode. He pulls off Derek’s face, brings their foreheads together. They pant at each other, eyes closed.

“We should- get to my place”, Derek says, voice rough and deep like sex. 

Stiles suppresses the urge to fist pump. He did that.

But. They’re not dating. And he doesn’t want to screw this up or go too fast. He knows himself, he’d like to do things- right. Well. As right as he can.

“Um- I don’t- like,  _ believe me _ I want to but. I don’t think it’s a good idea?” He can’t help making it a question, feeling awkward trying to be responsible and  _ not _ climb Derek like a tree.

Derek steps away from him, their bodies disconnecting reluctantly. Stiles instantly misses the warmth of him. Derek frowns at him, frustrated.

“This might be our only chance to… before, you know.”

Stiles doesn’t know. “Before what?”

Derek looks at him, accusation shining through the piercing grey of his eyes. “Before you go back to Boston.”

Ice fills Stiles’ veins. Then boiling lava. He thumps his back on the side of the car, throws his hands toward Derek. 

“So what, I was just gonna use you then leave?” he cries, voice slightly strangled.

Derek rolls his eyes with his whole head. His hands are stuffed in his pockets, posture standoffish. Stiles wants to get him back. He wants this conversation not to happen.

“Well”, Derek says, shittily. Derek has never been shitty to Stiles. It stings.

“Derek, seriously?” Stiles all but yells. “You seriously think I’m that kind of person?”

No answer. Derek is not looking at him. Stiles wants to maybe cry. Or smash Derek’s head into his car window.

“I know I fucked up before, but I- I apologized!” he tries to justify, voice wavering. His hands are gripping at his hair, tugging. “If you think that’s what this is, then what am I even doing here?” He means to make it a barb, but it comes out too honest, vulnerable.

Suddenly, he doesn’t want Derek to look at him at all. So of course Derek does, because he’s a contrary asshole. 

“So what Stiles?” he throws at him. “What’s going to happen?” He gestures at the distance between them. It seems greater than it actually is. “Are you going to ask me to come with you, and then we can both sleep on Lydia’s couch, and everything will be awesome?”

That is the stupidest thing Stiles has ever- 

“I can’t sleep on Lydia’s couch anymore!” he yells. “It’s not there!”

That stops Derek right up on his way to be truly pissed. He furrows his brow. “Did she sell it or something.”

Not one question mark is implied in that sentence. He’s completely ridiculous. Stiles shakes his head. 

“No, you moron. She’s moving.” He scratches at his cheek, glances quickly at Derek and away. He tries not to blush from the intensity of Derek’s gaze. “She got the research grant she wanted, in San Francisco.”

Derek’s shoulders lose their tension so fast, Stiles is worried he’ll collapse in a heap on the ground for a second. 

“Uh”, Derek answers intelligently. “She taking Parrish?”

Stiles shakes his head, can’t help a wry smile. Derek takes a small, tiny step toward him.

“Nope. She’s taking Mark.” Stiles is definitely not gloating about that. No siree.

Derek furrows his brow briefly at him, confused.

“Oh, uh. Her research assistant”, Stiles clarifies. “The one who’s always messing up her samples?” Derek nods. “Lydia likes them innocent and scared of her.”

That earns him a real, fond smile. Derek takes another step toward him. They’re a hair away from touching. Stiles tries to keep his body from melding into Derek’s.

Derek cocks his head to the side, looks over his shoulder at the darkness looming beyond the parking lot. 

“So uh, where will you be staying?” he asks, all off-hand and nonchalant and with inflection like a real boy.

Stiles shrugs, looks away from the grey hairs studding Derek’s jaw. 

“Actually…” he starts, chuckles, “fuck, you’re such an asshole.” He uses whatever small space is left between them to feebly punch at Derek’s shoulder.

Derek rocks back on his heels, affronted. “Wh- _ I _ ’m the asshole-”

Stiles prods him in the chest with his index finger. “Yes!” He tries to hold his grin in but he keeps failing. “I was gonna take you out to lunch tomorrow, tell you in front of pizza at the Italian restaurant you like. I had it all planned out.” He pouts for good measure.

Derek’s eyes are round flashes of color in his face. “Stiles. Planned what out?”

He lets out a breath, takes the leap. “I’m, uh… I’m thinking of moving, too. There’s this position waiting for me at Berkeley, at the comp-sci department. I didn’t have a real reason to consider it, you know.” He scratches at his cheek, looks at the beams of light cast on the gravel by the parking lot lamps. “But now...”

Stiles can see clear as day how hard Derek tries to hide his smile, play it cool. Dork. Stiles might love him.

“Berkeley, uh?” he says, smirking, hands in the pockets of his jeans, like he’s Danny fucking Zuko. “That’s awfully close. What, three hours away?”

Stiles smiles at his shoes for no reason at all. “Yeah, just about.”

Derek leans on the car, looking over at Stiles with his obnoxious, irresistible smirk. “Uh. Interesting.”

Stiles puts his hands in his hoodie pockets, narrows his eyes as he looks back at Derek. “Yep.”

Derek dips his chin, looks at Stiles as he ponders something. He smiles, small and genuine. “Wanna discuss it at length tomorrow over pizza?”

Stiles pushes Derek’s laughing face as far away from him as he can. “Asshole.”


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EPILOGUE !!  
> this is it. this story is done.  
> THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart, to every one who made it here.  
> and a very special thank you to all the people who commented regularly. you guys kept giving me faith in this story and my ability to write it. I am so glad I finished it, and it's because of you.

San Francisco is warm for the season. A beam of gentle sunlight reaches the terrace they’re settled at on the corner of Dolores Park, sipping their coffees silently. Stiles ordered an overly complicated mocha-whipped cream concoction Derek rolled his eyes at. He’s still drinking his horrendous black coffee. Man doesn’t know how to have fun.

Derek drove down for the weekend. They had lunch with Lydia. 

Lydia seems to thrive in the city. She’s beautiful and tanned, terrorizing undergrad and grad students alike. The supernatural community here is wide and diverse, and, like the rest of the city, pretty chill. Lydia met other banshees, Stiles tagged along for a few of these meetings. They exchanged tips and tricks, spoke of trauma and fears head on. When Stiles told Derek about it, he opined, shared a few anecdotes from his time in New York, where he met creatures he didn’t even know existed.

Stiles enjoys seeing this weird relationship develop. Derek and Lydia are definitely friendly, and allies, and probably pack too. Stiles should ask Scott about that next weekend when he’s in Beacon Hills. They’re probably never going to be real friends though, unable to find a wavelength to communicate at. But they obviously like each other and understand the other’s place in Stiles’ life. That’s good enough.

Besides, Derek has his own friends. They’re younger members of the force at the station, Chris Argent, and Scott. Derek is soft around them, unguarded. The old ladies in town know him for his kind smiles and good manners. They bake him pies, sometimes. 

Derek grooms his beard almost obsessively and likes emo bands. He emptied two drawers in his dresser for Stiles’ things. His coffee machine from Hell was a gift from Jenna for his birthday. Stiles is always the one who uses it. Good coffee is good coffee.

Derek doesn’t like movies, but can binge TV shows for a whole weekend without ever getting up off the couch. He loves to sleep with his face mashed in the crook of Stiles’ neck. His shampoo smells like honey. He skypes with Cora once every two weeks. They spend long stretches of time looking at each other, not talking. 

Derek has a box of singed, faded photographs of his family under his bed. He gets it out sometimes, spends hours looking at them and not crying. 

He likes it when Stiles scratches his ears, but pretends he doesn’t. He’s surprisingly amazing at phone sex. He hates the taste of beer but will drink a few with Stiles’ dad as they’re grilling on the porch for Sunday barbecues. 

There’s a million things Stiles has learned about Derek since they started dating. Some are weird (he hates peanut butter). Some are downright off-putting (he folds his socks instead of balling them up in pairs like any normal human being). But they’re parts of Derek and Stiles loves him.

He lifts his head from his mound of whipped cream, finds Derek looking back at him, a fond smile on his face. 

“What?” Stiles asks.

Derek shakes his head, looks up at the sky. “You’re ridiculous, is all”, he answers.

Stiles reaches out his hand. Derek grabs it, laces their fingers together. 

He submitted his paperwork to transfer a week ago. The Sheriff gave him the Disapproving Face, but it was somewhat dulled by the happy smile dancing around his lips. Stiles’ dad has been a steady, gruff cheerleader of their relationship ever since he caught them making out in his kitchen one Sunday. Scott had made a face and whined a dejected “gross”. Melissa had cuffed him around the head. 

They’d discussed getting separate apartments at first, to keep things slow. But slow had flown out the window the minute they started this thing. So they’re getting a place together and sharing a big mattress on the floor. They’ll each get a dresser, Derek’s coffee machine will be set up in the kitchen and the rest really doesn’t matter.

They’ll be three hours away (two if they take the Camaro, Derek keeps repeating) from Scott and the pack if they need them. His dad is also moving, in with Melissa. Stiles will have no rest until he convinces him to retire.

Stiles and Lydia are working together on a dark web network where supernatural communities of the world could share their lore and knowledge anonymously, find answers to their questions, find help for their issues. It’s still very undefined and raw, but Stiles is quietly hopeful about it. It feels good. Useful. Better than a baseball bat or a pointless spark.

Derek squeezes his hand to bring him back to the present and the sludge of barely diluted sugar dancing at the bottom of his mug. He slurps at it, giving Derek a questioning look.

“We should get going soon.” 

They have an appointment to visit a place in the Castro. Stiles finds living in that neighborhood too cliche, but Derek just shrugged. A place is a place. Stiles finishes the gross, cold mess that’s left in his mug. Derek grimaces, disgusted. Stiles grins, makes a kissy face at him.

As they walk down the street, Derek reaches for his hand again, gives him a small, private smile. Stiles’ heart gives a little syncopated rhythm, a stumbled drum. He smiles back at Derek. He loves him, he’s sure. He loves him so much, so suddenly, so evidently. And Derek loves him back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YA KNOW YA GIRL WAS GONNA MAKE THEM END UP IN SAN FRANCISCO! Pretty sure Stiles becomes best friends with Nomi and Neets at some point. All our queer faves in the same place. <3
> 
> Now lemme be a bit of an emotional mess:  
> I started writing this story in November 2016, just as I was starting a new job.  
> I wrote the epilogue scene at 4am in August 2017, crying in my bed, the day before I had to go back to that same job after a few weeks of holiday.  
> now I'm finishing it, and in about a month, I am free from that same horrible, nightmarish job.  
> time is meaningless unless we assign meaning to it. this is meaningful to me. writing this story has been very meaningful to me.  
> thank you for sharing this adventure with me.

**Author's Note:**

> come hang out at the [tumbles](http://innermanboobs.tumblr.com)!


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